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CQKRIGHT DEPOSfK 



CHRISTMAS AND 
THE YEAR ROUND 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

JUST HUMAN $1.00 net 

THE LOOKING GLASS $1.00 net 

FOOTNOTES TO LIFE $1.00 net 

ADVENTURES IN COMMON 
SENSE $1.00 net 

WAR AND WORLD GOVERN- 
MENT , $1.00 net 



JOHN LANE COMPANY, New York 



CHRISTMAS AND 
THE YEAR ROUND 

By DR. FRANK CRANE 

Author of "Just Human," 
"Footnotes to Life," 
"The Looking Glass," 
"Adventures in Common Sense," 
"War and World Government," Etc. 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD : MCMXVII 






Copyright, 1917, 
By JOHN LANE COMPANY 



NOV "-5 1317 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York, U. S. A. 



§>CU47696S 

1 



TO 

PAUL SCOTT MOWRER 

IN MEMORY OF MANY A FRUITFUL HOUR IN PARIS, 

WHEN THE THEMES IN THIS BOOK WERE 

DISCUSSED, AND THE UNIVERSE 

GENERALLY REGULATED 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/christmasyearrouOOcran 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Christmas Means the Indestructibility of Joy 13 

About 400 Words 16 

The Wife 19 

The Art of Quietness 22 

Life an Adventure 25 

The Man Who Keeps His Word 28 

Imagination 31 

Democracy 35 

The Critic 38 

US 41 

The Most Vital Question 44 

Rejection and Efficiency . 46 

The Old-Fashioned Infidel 49 

Popularity and Ability 52 

Professionalism 55 

Function and Faculty 58 

System and Comfort 61 

Ignorance As a Fine Art 64 

Fooling the Children 67 

Saving Faith 70 

The Postponement of Life 72 

That Undying Heathen 76 

Old Clothes 79 

It Depends Upon the Man 82 

Real Charity 86 

The Deadly Microbe of Expediency .... 89 

The Spendthrift of Love 92 

7 



PAGE 

Red Hats and Red Heels 95 

Training the Instincts 98 

The Delusion of Safety 101 

Geographical Lines 104 

Pay! Pay! Pay! 107 

The Examination Humbug no 

The Survival of the Best 112 

The Truth 116 

Punishment • 119 

Medievalism in Literature . 122 

Faith 125 

The Human Magnet 128 

The Certainty of Success 131 

The Joy of Work 135 

The Up-To-Date Sinner 138 

Prejudice 141 

Is Money the Main Thing? 144 

Disgruntled Honesty 147 

Superstition 150 

Premonitions 153 

The Democracy of Higher Things 156 

The Road to Contentment 159 

The Good Sport 162 

The Child With No Gifts 165 

The Working Girl 168 

Everyday Mysteries 172 

The Love of Praise 175 

The Way of Looking at Things 178 

The Classic 181 

The College President 183 

Death 1 #..'•'•• 187 

Women's Hats and Something On Them . . . 189 

The Lost Pocketbook 192 

8 



PAGE 

Grandmother 195 

Lily Work Upon the Pillars 198 

A Man's First Duty 200 

Why We Argue 203 

Some Pleasing Fiction 206 

The Gospel of Psychology 209 

The Stuffed Club of Ignorance 212 

The Appreciators 215 

Misplaced Men 218 

At Night 221 

The Five Lamps of Failure 224 

The Descent From Luxury 227 

The White Night 230 

Spotlitis 233 

The Minority Are In the Majority .... 236 

Fire and Fun 239 

The Soul's Captaincy 242 

Lamenting the Loss of Tail and Bark . . . 244 

What I Shall Do When I Get to Heaven . . 247 

The Harp of a Thousand Strings 250 

The Dream-Lost 254 



CHRISTMAS AND 
THE YEAR ROUND 



CHRISTMAS MEANS THE 
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF JOY 

Christmas is the protest of the human race 
against gloom. 

The one thing time nor force can suppress is 
instinct. 

In days past religion tried to stamp out earthly 
gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As 
well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the 
Mississippi. 

When we have clamped human nature down 
with our reasonings and revelations, along comes 
Instinct, and to use the words of Bennet, blandly 
remarks : 

"Don't pester Me with Right and Wrong. I 
am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own con- 
venience, and no one but Nature (with a big, big 
N) shall talk to me!" 

In the fourth century the Christian world was 
pretty dismal. This world was considered a 
dreadful place, to get away from as soon as pos- 
sible. Consequently, the boys and girls were lured 
off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone 
raced and danced and frolicked. 

Then the Church established the Christmas fes- 

13 



tival, which was one of her wisest strokes of * 
policy. 

In 342 A. D. the good Bishop Tiberius 
preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome. 

Into this opening poured the play instinct of 
the world. 

The time of the winter solstice strangely enough 
had been the jovial period of the year everywhere. 
Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on 
the hills in honor of Mother Friga, goddess of 
Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Satur- 
nalia, the one carnival of democracy and equality 
during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. 
Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise 
of Dionysius. In Egypt at this period the popu- 
lace bore palms for the god Horus, in Persia they 
celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus 
in India sang their songs to Vishnu. 

Many of these festivals had become very cor- 
rupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of 
national joy. 

The wisest thing Christians ever did was to 
turn this feast day over to the child. 

The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the 
world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible. 

It's a weary world to those who have lived 
wrong or too long, but to those who remain 
healthy in their tastes it's a wonderful world, full 
of undying youth, running with sap, recurrent with 
primal joy. 

14 



Christmas means the supreme fact about life, 
namely: that it is joyful. 

In the opinion of many the greatest music ever 
composed is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. As 
a climax for his orchestral composition the master 
chose a chorus to sing Schiller's "Hymn to Joy." 

Christmas means that when this world and all 
its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last 
men and women stand at the end of time and 
contemplate the complete story of humanity, they 
will not wail nor hang their heads, but they will 
shout and exult. 

The truest, most everlasting element of man- 
kind is play, accompanied with laughter. 



15 



ABOUT 400 WORDS 

Why 400 words? 

It is not because of any fanciful reason, nor 
is it for no reason, but it is for a very good rea- 
son, well thought out, based on psychological 
law, and on a general knowledge of human na- 
ture, that these articles of mine are 400 words 
long. 

Into the secret whereof I will let you, as it may 
divert you. Everybody likes to be told a secret, 
whether they have any business to know it or not. 
In fact, the less concern it is of theirs the more 
they like it. 

Besides, you may learn something. People 
do not object to learning something, provided 
it was not intentional. 

First, these articles are a certain kind of lit- 
erature, if the critics will allow me just this once 
to call them so. They are didactic. They belong 
to the class of essays, review articles, lectures 
and sermons. 

Now, if you will carefully analyze any sermon 
of your pastor, any speech of your senator, any 
article in the Forum or North American Review, 
or an essay in the Atlantic or elsewhere, you will 

16 



discover that it is composed of a number of parts. 
It is, as it were, a wall made up of a certain 
number of stones — possibly, like a quilt of our 
grandmother's, composed of "pieces" sewed to- 
gether. 

Parsons in olden times made no bones of this, 
and unashamedly announced their firstly, secondly, 
twenty-thirdly, finally and in conclusion. Now- 
adays writers and speakers conceal as best they 
may the joints of their work, but the joints are 
there notwithstanding. 

The reason is simple. No idea is longer than 
400 words. If it exceeds that length it is two 
or more ideas. (N.B. Can't prove it.) 

The articles, one of which you are now pe- 
rusing, are or aim to be single ideas, one thing 
at a time, not a series of related thoughts; in 
short, not a brick wall but a brick, not a house 
but a board. 

For have you not noticed that of any essay 
you read you retain usually but one point, if any? 
And of any lecture it is some one or two ideas you 
carry away? 

The mind is not constituted to grasp a whole 
chain of reasoning. You may get the conclusion, 
but without study you cannot retain the entire 
argument. And, as I said, as a rule it is neither 
the conclusion nor the argument that sticks to 
your memory, but one or two of the "bricks." 

Four hundred words, therefore, make the best 
length for a writing of this kind. 

17 



(My private opinion is that 200 words would 
be better, but the editor doesn't think so.) 

In this length you get, in each instance, some 
one clear idea. 

Furthermore, the purpose of all this kind of 
literature is or ought to be suggestion, not argu- 
ment and proof. 

Nobody wants to argue (except a few choice 
spirits who are expert dodgers and twisters), but 
everybody can take a hint, and all sensible peo- 
ple like a suggestion. 

To my mind the Parables of Jesus and the 
Essays of Bacon are the greatest masterpieces 
of teaching. And their brevity commends them, 
and gives me my model. 

Emerson, Macaulay, Carlyle, De Quincey, and 
Elia would have done well (am I profane to say 
it?) to have broken each essay edifice into essay 
bricks. 

Peopld like to build their own walls. But 
they are thankful for bricks. 



18 



THE WIFE 

A wife is a peculiar institution. 

She is not a sweetheart, she is not a mistress, 
she is not a waitress, she is not a friend, she is not 
a partner, she is not a housekeeper, she is not a 
helpmeet, she is not a manager. She is just a wife. 

She may partake of the nature of one or more 
of the above mentioned personages; but she is 
something else. 

A man marries a sweetheart. As soon as the 
ceremony is over he makes a discovery that is 
sometimes shattering, and that is that the relation 
of the woman to him has suddenly and radically 
changed. 

This is a good thing. A sweetheart would wear 
on you : a wife grows on you. 

It takes some years to appreciate a wife. Gil- 
bert Chesterton points out "the law of the second 
wind." By this he means that in all things of 
permanent usefulness and pleasure there is a 
period of weariness or repulsion that has to be 
overcome before we come into its perfect enjoy- 
ment, just as a man runs better when he gets his 
second wind. 

19 



This law applies to learning a foreign language, 
to reading classics, to appreciating good art, to 
becoming an athlete, and to every other attainment 
that is of any account. 

It consequently applies to marriage, which is 
the matter of most account in the world. 

It takes patience, and practice, and self-control, 
and will power to get the good out of marriage, 
precisely as one learns to play the piano so as to 
derive any pleasure from it. 

The wife is an individual. She has her own 
personality. Her views, tastes, notions, and habits 
are not ours. 

If the two people will set themselves conscien- 
tiously to become adjusted, time and love will 
grow a beautiful marriage. 

The one thing needful is loyalty. 

Determined, dog-like loyalty will eventually 
heal nine marriage troubles out of ten. 

Be loyal through thick and thin, u in sickness 
and in health, for better or for worse," and you 
will find out some things. 

You will learn that a wife has more treasures 
in her hands than any other creature. 

She has love, and a kind of love that is a hun- 
dred times better than any affinity or other tem- 
porary woman friend : the kind of love that soaks 
through your body, brain, and soul, and becomes 
a part of you. 

She has power. There is more instigating dy- 
namic in her little finger than in a whole council 

20 



of friends, a whole library of books, and a whole 
bench of bishops. 

She has religion. Not precisely the church 
brand, perhaps; but just to live with an honest 
woman is not a bad sort of religion. You find 
yourself quietly moved away from a whole world 
of low and unworthy motives and meditations. 

She has beauty. No matter how her face ap- 
pears, a good woman, if you live in loyal intimacy 
with her, reveals to you the essential beauty of 
womanhood. 

Most divorces are caused by moral lesion. 

The surest sign of one's character going to 
pieces is a restiveness of the emotions. 

Say what you please of new charms, of peachy 
cheeks and luring eyes, of soul mates and novel 
darlings, the only love that makes a man a man, 
the only love that is fine and high and Godlike, 
is the love that you stick to. 

The thing most pregnant with nobleness of 
mind and real greatness of character in this world 
is — loyalty. 

The halo is never over the clasped hands of 
man and woman unless there be in their hearts 
the pledge and solemn purpose — "till death do 
us part." 



21 



THE ART OF QUIETNESS 

Cultivate quietness. 

All noise is waste. All real power is silent. 

The most powerful thing in the range of human 
observation is the sun. He rises every morning 
in quiet dawn and goes down every evening in 
soundless sunset. He lifts billions of tons of 
water daily from the ocean, creates the wind cur- 
rents that carry it over to descend in rain upon 
the land. He juggles Jupiter and Venus, Saturn 
and Tellus and the other planets, as the showman 
tosses oranges. And we never hear from him 
a whisper. 

Go into a cotton factory. In the top story are 
the rattling looms; great noise and little power, 
for you can stop a flying shuttle with your linger. 
As you descend the successive stories of the build- 
ing you find power in an inverse ratio to noise, 
until at last, in the basement, you come to the huge 
engine thrusting to and fro its giant arm of steel 
in swift silence, and if you should get in its road 
it would crush you as an eggshell. 

All noise is waste. If you could bottle the hiss- 
ing steam of the locomotive or cage the rattle of 

22 



the trolley car you would have that much more 
energy. 

All noise is waste. So cultivate quietness; in 
your speech, in your manner, in your thought, in 
your emotions. 

Speak habitually low. Wait for silence and at- 
tention, and then your low words will be charged 
with dynamic. 

Speak modestly. Get the reputation for under- 
stating things, and what you say will have double 
force; but be a known exaggerator and you will 
make no impression. 

Let your manner be quiet. Dress unobtrusively. 
Enter a room unobtrusively. Avoid all desire to 
attract attention. 

Modesty is not weak. It is strong. It is the 
hammer of the soul. 

Encourage quiet thoughts. Nothing shrieks if 
it be true. Truth is eternal, and eternal things 
are low-keyed. 

Imitate God, who is the most silent of all be- 
ings. He hides in nature. He lurks in the secret 
places of the heart. He moves hidden behind 
history. 

Teach quietness to your emotions. Great love 
is not best spelled by violent bursts of passion, but 
by daily radiance, by 

"The little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love, 
That best portion of a good man's life.'* 

23 



Often go out and watch the night sky and let 
its silence sink into your soul. 

Study great men and great women and notice 
their reserve and poise. 

Read great books and observe their calm po- 
tence. 

Be still and be great. 



24 



LIFE AN ADVENTURE 

We are always wanting to know the answer. 
And there isn't any answer. 

We hasten through the novel to see how it all 
comes out. Life doesn't come out. It just goes on. 

After the dramatic climax on the stage the cur- 
tain falls. In life the curtain doesn't fall. After 
the climax we have to go on living. 

When you tell your little child a story, and have 
got hero and heroine properly married, and the 
villain stabbed and thrown over the cliff, the child 
asks, "And then what did they do ? Go on !" But 
the story is finished. Life never finishes. It is 
eternally "to be continued in our next." 

Problems in arithmetic have their solutions over 
in the back of the book. In life there are no so- 
lutions. 

The fact is, life is a huge experiment, a con- 
tinuous trying, and when we die we realize that 
we never quite got it right. The reason for this 
is that life is an art, as Edward Howard Griggs 
says, and not a science. 

Science is exact, art is indefinite. 

Science can be taught, art is learned only by 
practice. 

25 



Therefore art comes nearest to expressing life. 
Painting, sculpture, and poetry are truer than 
mathematics. 

It has been said, "Art is long and life is short." 
It is a mistake. Life is as long as art. For life 
is the greatest of all arts. 

How often we " wonder how it is all going to 
turn out." Cheer up ! You will never know. 

When the event has come you looked for or 
dreaded you will find yourself with just as great 
a problem on your hands as before. 

Life is symbolized rightly by Omar Khayyam : 

There was a Door to which I found no Key ; 
There was a Veil past which I could not see. 

Poets have been inclined to mourn over this 
condition of things. But the situation is cheerful, 
and not discouraging. 

For the uncertainty, the puzzle and riddle of 
life, gives it zest. They make of it a great game. 

It is the element we call luck that is necessary 
to a game of cards or dice, of baseball or foot 
racing. If it were possible to know precisely how 
to win it would be a "sure thing," and all the 
fascinating element of sport would be gone. 

So the uncertain factors of success, the entrance 
of accidents, the intrusion of the unforeseen, make 
life itself worth living. It is these things that keep 
us alert and keyed up. 

To-morrow, to all of us, is an unknown sea. 
26 



The lookout must never leave the prow as we 
sweep on into strange waters. The captain must 
be on the bridge. At any time we may hear the 
roar of breakers ahead. 

And then, any morning, we may awake to dis- 
cover America. 

Let us cheer one another with hopeful shouts — 
"Good luck!" and "Godspeed!" and let us sing 
songs as we plunge forward in the sea of destiny 
engaged upon the great Adventure called Life. 



27 



THE MAN WHO KEEPS HIS WORD 

There are all sorts of men who have been 
praised for all sorts of things. But I give first 
place, first prize, and the blue ribbon, also honor- 
able mention, the gold medal, and the Victoria 
cross, together with the Nobel prize and three 
cheers, to the man who keeps his word. 

My favorite character in fiction is the Count of 
Monte Cristo, who when he said that he would 
arrive at 12 o'clock, opened the door and walked 
in while the clock was on the sixth stroke of 12. 

When a certain boodler, grafter, and otherwise 
thoroughly naughty and disreputable gentleman 
had been pounded black and blue by the news- 
papers, and all the good people had shrieked 
themselves hoarse crying out for his gore, it was 
said of him, and no one denied it, that whatever 
crimes he had committed, he at least always kept 
his word, I couldn't help it, my heart warmed to 
him. 

I think I should rather associate with a burglar 
who keeps his word than with a college president 
who executes a neat side-step when you look to him 
to do what he said he would do. 

There are all sorts of enemies to society, but 
28 



no one of them comes nearer ham-stringing the 
entire body politic than the liar. 

It is well to teach your little boy to wash his 
face and hands, not to use intoxicating liquors, 
and to be polite to ladies; also to learn his lessons, 
but there is nothing you can teach him that will 
have more to do with making a real man of him 
than to grind it daily into his mind and soul that 
he is to keep his word if it takes a leg. 

The man who keeps his word is like a great 
tree in a sandy plain; when you meet him you have 
peace and rest; you take a long breath; your faith 
in mankind rises several degrees; whatever his 
church is you want to belong to it. 

There are many troublesome things on earth; 
there are snakes who may poison you, dogs 
who may bite you, women who may betray 
you, ditches into which you may fall, thorns 
to stick you, microbes to infest you, and skit- 
tish horses to run away with you, but of all 
dangerous, uncomfortable objects here below the 
one that gives you the creeps the worst way is the 
man who may keep his word and may not. 

The man who keeps his word rises above all 
race and prejudice; for a Chinese, Japanese, Fiji, 
negro, or wild Indian who does simply what he 
says he will do is better than a white man with a 
million dollars, a university education, and four 
kinds of artistic and literary gifts, and who lies. 

The one genuine aristocracy is composed of 
those people who keep their word. The king who 

29 



promises and fails to perform, the bishop who 
promises and evades, the banker who promises 
and presents excuses instead of fulfilment, the 
president who promises and forgets, are all 
plain ordinary scrubs; while the servant girl 
or ditch digger who comes around at the minute 
agreed upon and makes good — of such is the king- 
dom of heaven. 

Keeping your word is not a matter of the letter, 
but of the spirit. It is not always possible to do 
the thing promised. But a man that has the spirit 
of the matter in him, will hasten to notify if he 
sees he cannot perform, and if even that is impos- 
sible he will apologize, reimburse, and show regret 
just as soon afterward as ever he can. 

But when he shows he does not care, when he 
leaves his pledge unredeemed and gaily whistles, 
when he gives obligations lightly, and strews his 
word about as a thing of no value, then it is that 
you are tempted to believe that jails and peniten- 
tiaries should rather be for those who do not do 
things than for those who do things, and that the 
hard working highway robber is not such a bad 
person after all. 



30 



IMAGINATION 

We are apt to consider imagination as a mere 
ornamental faculty, a frill to the solider powers 
of the mind. It is even regarded sometimes as a 
kind of mental defect which causes the victim to 
see confusing hues around the edges of facts: and 
those whose eyes, like achromatic lenses, see 
everything clean cut are supposed to be superior 
people. 

The mother complains of her dreamy boy. 
Children are reproved for the fictional exaggera- 
tions they throw around the plain telling of any 
occurrence, and are lectured upon the danger of 
"lying." The little girl who plays with real fairies 
and talks constantly to an imaginary companion, 
and the grov/n person who "sees things," are 
thought to be somehow deficient. 

The truth is, the imagination is the most useful 
of our gifts. It is more fruitful in producing effi- 
ciency and happiness than either a good memory 
or sound reason. It ought to be carefully culti- 
vated, as a flower of paradise, and not attacked 
as a noxious weed. 

The most efficient faculty is the creative faculty; 

3i 



and this is the imagination. It takes imagination 
to be a great merchant. System, shrewdness, and 
economy make an ordinary success, but the power 
to see the unseen needs to be added to produce a 
Marshall Field. 

Those scientists who are discoverers, who go 
before the solid phalanx of the learned and find 
out new laws in nature, have as much imagination 
as poets. In reading the lives of Kepler, Laplace, 
Newton, Galileo, Flammarion, and Metchnikoff 
we are struck by their exuberant vision. 

It takes imagination to be an inventor, an Edi- 
son, Marconi, Howe, or Westinghouse. These 
men would never have done what they did by sheer 
reasoning. 

And of course it takes imagination to be a great 
novelist, poet, musician, painter, or sculptor. 

But most of all it requires imagination to live 
a great life. Imagination is a most vital ele- 
ment in forming character. One cannot be good 
without it. 

The word good is used with two meanings ; one 
is that the person does nothing improper, obeys 
rules, is of regular life, and well behaved; this 
is a lower form of goodness. The other implies 
that a person is actively good, attacks evil con- 
ditions, energetically radiates good cheer, and is 
positively occupied in making people happier; this 
is the higher form of goodness, and is impossible 
without a strong imagination. 

One can observe a code of moral rules and 
32 



be dull; one cannot carry out the principles of 
Jesus without imagination. 

You cannot "put yourself in his place" unless 
you can fancy vividly what his place is. 

Kindness is mainly the ability to make real to 
yourself the feelings of others. 

Mercy and pity cannot exist in a heart that 
cannot realize another's situation. 

Charity, "the greatest of these," tolerance of 
another's views, the bearing with another's weak- 
ness, and patience with another's eccentricities all 
demand a lively imagination, the faculty of mak- 
ing clear to yourself another's case. 

Religion, at least on its warmer, human side, 
where it softens men's hearts one toward another, 
relieves suffering and preaches "peace and good 
will toward men," is of imagination all compact. 
This does not mean that God, the angels and 
heaven are not realities, but that the soul that can- 
not u see" such things is never religious. 

And the beauty of life, how much it is due 
to our ability to fancy! Shear jfrom us our 
dreams, leave us only facts and figures, beef and 
bricks and beer, and it is as if you would have 
apples without spring's divine apple blossoms, 
cherries without the bee-thronged blooms, the 
laboring sun without his opal dawns and fire-shot 
twilights, nights without the stars, the nation with- 
out the flag, birth without love, life without mys- 
tery, and death without hope beyond. 

Without imagination the very world would be 
33 



without its Father; men could never again sing 
Schiller's Hymn to Joy: 

"Patience, Millions, as ye plod 
Painfully toward the Day! 
There above the starry way 
Reigns the great disposing God!" 



34 



DEMOCRACY 

Democracy is not altogether a good word. 
It has been so used that it has come to connote 
too many things. Like the word Christianity it 
has been loaded down with extraneous matter. 

But, if we strip it of all its accretions and get 
back to its original meaning, the rule of the peo- 
ple, we shall find it to be by far the biggest word 
in the dictionary. 

Democracy! It has more electric energy in it 
than any other word. 

It is the masterword of the twentieth century. 

It is Christianity — disinfected. 

Out of the muck of the Dark Ages, the mold 
and mildew of heathenism, the storms of theologi- 
cal controversy, the narrow contention of sects, 
the welter of universal ignorance and supersti- 
tion, the cruelty of kings, and the madness of fa- 
naticism, there is unfolding at last this bloom, the 
flower of the world, the rose of the human race 
— democracy. 

Democracy is not a scheme nor a party. It 
is not a system of choosing rulers, nor the substi- 
tution of the hustings for heredity. 

It is a Spirit. It is the dawn of conscious worth 
35 



in the common man. It is The People realizing 
their divinity. 

There was nothing the Pilgrim Fathers left us, 
as Lowell says, of more value than the New Eng- 
land Town Meeting. 

Democracy is a thing to be felt, like God. You 
can prove one no more than the other. Neither 
can be explained. Both are great, life-living, 
germ-ripening sun-ideas that dawn upon the mind. 

Democracy appeals to a sort of sixth sense, a 
nerve now beginning to function, but long atro- 
phied in man. It is the humanity nerve, it is 
the evolution of the social conscience. 

When a man realizes democracy it is like the 
phenomenon of "getting religion." 

The end of evolution seems to be the develop- 
ment of this humanity nerve, making it quick, 
strong, and dependable. 

Only a highly perfect culture of this nerve will 
cure the sempiternal boils of Privilege, that from 
time to time have broken out upon the body politic 
as monarchy, aristocracy, and plutocracy. 

Do you realize what democracy is going to do 
to us, when carried to its logical conclusions? 

It is going to knock out Privilege in the field 
of art. The noblest music, sculpture, painting and 
architecture will come where the genius serves 
humanity and not a money-king. 

It is going to remove all noble and imperial 
loafers from the backs of the people. 

It is going to start all human beings in life 

36 



with equal opportunity. It will not make all men 
equal, but it will give all babies a fair chance. 

It is going to arrange society so every willing 
hand and brain can find work and wages. 

It is going to abolish the slums. 

It is going to make every city beautiful, in 
the poor quarters as well as the rich. 

It is going to give every child a right to play 
and be happy. 

It is going to strike the last shackles off the 
woman's soul. 

It is going to revolutionize our systems of edu- 
cation, so that all children shall be equipped to 
live, and not merely be trained for some "station 
in life." 

It is going to reach up even to heaven and 
remove the czar and sultan ideas that evil ages of 
monarchy have fastened upon the Almighty and 
reveal Him to us as the Father. 

The sound of the Future is the roar of the 
many. The seer of old heard it, "as the voice of 
a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, 
and as the voice of many thunderings, saying, 
Alleluia !" 



37 



THE CRITIC 

Nothing is done so abundantly and so poorly 
as the business of criticism. 

No column in the daily newspaper is so disap- 
pointing, and might be so helpful, as that of the 
musical, dramatic, literary or art critic. 

The reason of this is that most writers are 
obsessed by the common and false notion of crit- 
icism that it consists in finding fault one way or 
another. 

It is indeed a part of true criticism to detect 
flaws, but it is by far the cheapest and easiest 
part. Any tyro can do it. To be sure, con- 
demnation always lends us a superior air, but it 
is entirely thin and fictitious. 

That which requires skill, tact, culture and 
brains is to praise intelligently. 

And do the able critics ever reflect upon the 
query, what is it the public wants? Speaking 
as one of the gray masses of the unexpert, I may 
be allowed to say that what we want, in the re- 
view of any artistic work, is that we shall be told 
what to admire and why we should admire it. 

We hoi polloi, who pay our pennies for the 
papers, do not so much care to know the defects 

38 



in the pictures exhibited in the galleries as to 
discover, by the aid of the critic's superior train- 
ing and experience, the elements of real beauty, 
those points in drawing, texture, color and feel- 
ing which our lay ability is likely to overlook. 
For it is such things that please us; and we go 
to art collections, as elsewhere, mainly to be 
pleased. 

The same is true of theatrical performances, of 
the opera, of the concert. Why not guide our 
enthusiasm? Why feed and develop our powers 
of dissatisfaction? We are dissatisfied enough 
as it is. 

Almost every kind of art work has some one 
that loves it. Only such a one ought to be charged 
with the duty of criticism. For love alone can 
see. Icy superiority is not only distinctly disagree- 
able, it is blind. 

When we turn to the masters of criticism we 
find in them this charm of enthusiasm. When 
Matthew Arnold criticizes Baruch Spinoza, when 
Thomas Carlyle dissects for us Frederick the 
Great or Oliver Cromwell, and when John Rus- 
kin writes of Turner or Giotto or Botticelli, these 
writings become classics, chiefly because they throb 
with generous appreciation; while De Quincey's 
vicious analysis of the character of Napoleon 
justly sinks into the oblivion of library back 
shelves. 

False notes, bad art and tawdry theatrical senti- 
ment must of course occasionally be drubbed by 

39 



the critic-police who guard the avenues of public 
taste. But what the humble crowd needs is to 
know what is worthy of love and wonder. And 
warmly appreciative criticisms not only delight 
the artist but cheer the ignobile vulgus. 

It is with critics as with preachers. A good 
healthy sermon upon the duty of doubt and the 
disbelief in humbugs, an occasional atrabilious 
scoring of frauds, is well enough; but what the 
regular congregation wants as a rule is to be 
shown the truth and beauty of this world and how 
to love and worship. 

It will do no harm for all critics, high and low, 
to lay to heart Matthew Arnold's definition of 
criticism : 

"A disinterested endeavor to learn and prop- 
agate the best that is known and thought in the 
world." 

Mark ! the best : show us where it is, and how 
to love it! 



40 



u s 



On the wall, over the desk of a prominent 
business man, in his private office, I saw one day a 
large white card, on which was printed in red ink 
the two letters: 



US 



"You seem to be patriotic," I said, indicating 
the card. 

"Yes?" he replied. Then he continued, "That 
may stand for the United States or for Uncle 
Sam, but here it means something else." 

"It means?" 

"Universal Spirit." 

"Queer thing for a business office !" 

"Yes, but why not?" 

"I did not know you were a religious man." 

"I'm not precisely what is usually meant by 
that term. I'm a good Episcopalian, as far as 
that is concerned, and pay my pew rent, but not 
what you would call pious. 

"But," he went on, musingly, "I had that sign 
made and hung up there because it brings to my 
mind the biggest thought in the world. 

41 



"There is somebody or other who is running 
this whole universe, sitting in the private office of 
the universe, and having the last word about 
everything, shaping the policy of all creation, just 
as I manage my concern. 

"I am his clerk. I get my day's wages. What 
he says goes. I can't cheat him, dodge him, or 
beat him. 

"Sometimes I get foolish and tend to forget 
that. Then I look up at that card." 

I asked, "But why don't you say God?" 

"I might as well, I suppose; only the word 
God implies too much. It's all grown over with 
barnacles of heathenism and superstition and big- 
otry. 

"Because U S has a flavor of the United States 
it seems modern. And I like to think of the 
Universal Spirit as a modern, present, live, act- 
ual being." 

"What good does it do you to have this card 
here?" I inquired. 

"It reminds me of obligations no one else sees. 

"It reminds me that I am a human being, just 
as all my employees are, and keeps me from 
treating labor as a lifeless commodity, as coal or 
iron. 

"It reminds me that my profits are not mine; 
they're His; I only have the use of them, and 
some day I will have to show my books. 

"It reminds me to live simply. He will stand 
no padded expense account from me, even as I 

42 



will not allow such a thing from one of my trav- 
elling salesmen. 

"It reminds me of the very thing that makes 
modern business possible — the conscientious hu- 
man factor. 

"An employee that does not feel the U S in 
his life is of no value. I want men I can trust, 
who can be honest in the dark. 

"The other day I called a young fellow in 
here and told him what that card stands for. 
Then I set him down in front of it and told him 
to look at it for an hour, and to think. 

"He had been getting a little frisky. I just 
left him alone with that card awhile. When I 
came back to the room there were tears in his 
eyes. That U S thought had smashed into him. 

"I never said a word to him. I hate preaching. 
But that hour struck in. It changed him. 

"I tell you that U S thought rolls in every 
man's heart like the boom of the ocean, as Vic- 
tor Hugo says. 

"When a man accustoms himself to listen to it 
he slowly gets in line with the big, deep truths of 
life." 



43 



THE MOST VITAL QUESTION 

Humanity is a queer thing. And one of the 
queerest things it does, is to be very solemn, se- 
rious and earnest about subjects that make no 
matter, such as the price of beef, or who will be 
elected governor, while it is very negligent, titter- 
ing and trivial about the greatest affair in which 
human creatures possibly can be engaged, that 
of a man and woman loving each other. 

Trifling matters such as the tariff, we discuss 
ponderously in legislatures and cabinets: ponder- 
ous matters, such as courtship, we discuss triflingly, 
in cafes and between the acts at the theatre. 

If you were to ask the next ten persons you 
meet, "What is the most important question now 
before the American people?" nine of them would 
probably say Conservation or Prohibition or the 
Trusts, or some such thing. 

But these are not great questions. They make 
little difference after all to you and your wife 
and your son John and his wife and the baby. 
They do not "come home to men's business and 
bosoms." 

The real gigantic question, that makes or mars 
us, is, "What are you going to do about love?" 

44 



Those other questions peep out of the attic 
windows of the mind. This sits at the hearth- 
stone of the heart. 

And did you ever reflect that there is no text- 
book of love, no school for love, no rules to 
learn nor exercises to practise, to fit one in this 
mightiest of arts? 

All the available sources of information con- 
sist in cheap quack books full of worse than drivel. 

The newspapers print double-leaded editorials 
on the election of somebody to the presidency, 
and somewhere on the back page, along with the 
want ads, is a little space, with fine print, de- 
voted to a discussion of the life and death sub- 
jects of love. 

Just because the affair is emotional is no rea- 
son why it should not be studied scientifically, 
which means with regard simply to truth and facts 
and laws. 

Psychology is young yet, the youngest of the 
sciences : but we expect great things from it when 
it grows up. From it alone can come real, reliable 
information about the laws of sex attraction, and 
sensible instruction how to kindle, tend, and keep 
alive the divinest of fires. 



45 



REJECTION AND EFFICIENCY 

The principle of efficiency is rejection. 

The only way to get things done is by refusal 
to do other things. 

A person is rich by what he does not spend, 
wise by what he does not know* a good workman 
is best tested by the work he never tries, and is 
kept alive by the things he does not eat. This, as 
Artemus Ward would have said, is "a goak," but 
truth lurks at the bottom of it just the same. 

Take the matter of reading. There are books 
without end. Parti-colored magazines deck the 
newsstand until it looks like a stained glass win- 
dow. And then there are the daily newspapers, 
each copy an encyclopedia of news, story, romance, 
essay, theatre, society, sport, finance, and politics. 

Newspapers are so cheap the reader no longer 
pays for them. The cent you give hardly covers 
the cost of the white paper. The advertiser pays. 
Soap, Ham, Underwear & Co. supply us with 
our literature. Our minds are no longer like 
chickens picking, but like chickens caged, with 
their food crammed into their crops. 

In the midst of this plenty a mind devoid of 
rejection is likely to starve. 

46 



We should not complain of the size of our 
morning or evening news sheet. For a newspaper 
is not for anybody; it is for everybody. When 
you go to a drug store you do not demand to 
drink everything in the bottles on the shelves. All 
you want is a nickel's worth of paregoric, and 
when you get it you go away. The spiritus fru- 
menti and hydrargium cum creta don't wory you. 
So when you read your paper the main thing is 
to skip. Some department is for you. Find that. 

Personally, I confess that I never read the 
financial columns because I have no money, nor 
the society columns because they bore me, nor 
the want advertisements because I do not want to 
buy anything, nor scandals because I do not like 
them, nor market reports because I do not under- 
stand them, nor political speeches because I do 
understand them. And I read any or all of them 
when they look interesting. 

Most of us read too much. We read at the 
breakfast table, read on the car, read at lunch, 
and read in bed. I even knew one woman who 
said she took her novel with her to read in the 
bathtub. 

It is well to browse occasionally in literature, 
without rule or aim, for so we sometimes find 
the rarest treasures. But to do nothing but browse 
is to grow monstrous lean. Our serious reading 
should be concentrated upon a few meaty books, 
and one well edited paper. 

But the subject overflows reading. Every tangi- 
47 



ble, cubic deed a man does, implies the rejection 
of a hundred reasons why he should not have 
done it. Every fact upsets a carload of theories. 
Everything that is, is a sheer triumph over causes, 
forces, and arguments why it should not be. 

Concentrate, eliminate, get away with the waste. 
Health consists in keeping the digestive tract free 
from obstipating matter; office efficiency means 
having a clean desk, and mental force lies in dis- 
criminating between essentials and rubbish. 

The matter with heathenism was not lack of 
belief. The heathen believed too much. His 
gods grew on every bush. The victory of mono- 
theism lay in its ejection of the worship of so 
many things not worthy of worship. Whoever 
your God is, He does not count much in your 
life until you have rejected all other gods. 



4 8- 



THE OLD-FASHIONED INFIDEL 

What has become of the old-fashioned in- 
fidel? 

Where are they now, who are worthy to wear 
the mantle of Voltaire, of Tom Paine, of Buech- 
ner, and of Ingersoll? 

The nearest we can come nowadays to this 
model is such as Elbert Hubbard or Bernard 
Shaw ; and these are so full of cheerful, construc- 
tive ideas that they find but little time to thwack 
religion. They certainly are mild, compared to 
the red and yellow idol-smashers of a former day. 

With the passing of Robert Ingersoll infidel- 
ity seems to have lost its lurid picturesqueness. 

Now, this is what has become of the old- 
time infidel. He has disappeared along with the 
man that made him, to wit: the old-time dog- 
matist. 

Rampant infidelity is the shadow cast by ram- 
pant dogmatism. 

Action is equal to reaction. Hit me and I'll 
hit you, or want to; and a soft answer turneth 
away wrath, said a wise man. 

Where the school teacher is a martinet, there 
you will find the cantankerous boy, who loves to 

49 



shock the teacher, and enjoys trouncings. When 
the master is kind and helpful and human, where 
is the fun in being a bad boy? 

Put a husband under the constant strain of 
jealousy and suspicion, and he must have a strong 
character to resist the temptation to deceive. 
Trust a man and deceit loses its amusing quality. 
As a rule, of course. 

There be some who lament the downfall of 
authority in the church. In the good old days 
heretics had to toe the mark. In Puritan times 
the parson's word was law in the New England 
village. Now, all that the poor clergy can do 
is to "reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffer- 
ing and kindness.' ' Their claws have been 
trimmed. They have been stripped down to what- 
ever personal, spiritual influence they may pos- 
sess. 

In other words the cardinal principle of Ameri- 
canism, religious toleration, has borne fruit. And 
the fruit is that the whole world of "outsiders," 
the secular and non-religious world, are vying 
with the orthodox in trying to save mankind. 

The magazines are full of moral purpose, the 
schools are taking up moral instruction, the sci- 
entific psychologist is trying his hand at stopping 
evil, the bacteriologist is working to save the race, 
and the daily newspapers are preaching righteous- 
ness. 

The underlying truth of the whole phenomena 
is that the curse of religion is monarchy and the 

50 



monarchic idea, the notion that force aids truth, 
that men are to be kept good or orderly by some 
superior, wiser class. Get to the secret of almost 
any social tangle and you will find it to be one 
form or another of the superior class obsession. 

What truth needs, and what religion needs — 
that is, that part of religion that is true, is to 
be democratized. Let truth alone. Remove the 
clamps. Take away the guards. Stop trying to 
steady the ark. Realize the littleness of your no- 
tions of expediency. And you will see how truth 
is abundantly able to take care of itself and us 
to boot. 

Abraham Lincoln saw this. When a delega- 
tion of preachers said to him that they would 
pray the Lord might be on his side, he answered 
that he thought it much more important that he 
be on the Lord's side. 

With the removal of dogmatism and all forms 
of force, the enemies to religion are removed. 
For real religion never did have any real enemies. 

The common people have always heard preach- 
ing gladly. The only foes Jesus had were the 
Pharisees. Demos and Jesus have always been 
secretly friendly. It is the Privileged Class, in 
deed and in thought, that has ever been hostile to 
the Nazarene. 



5i 



POPULARITY AND ABILITY 

There are two kinds of able men: some men 
are able to get elected to office, and others are 
able to discharge worthily the duties of the office. 
The trouble is that the two kinds of ability rarely 
go together. 

The weak spot in democracy is its overemphasis 
of the value of popularity. The power to get 
one's self liked has its place, but does not rank 
very high in the service of the state. 

I have known preachers who were successful 
merely because of this asset. In fact, I have 
now to my mind's eye a man, a good man, who 
has just been elected bishop of somewhere or 
other who never as a pastor had any of the 
qualifications of a spiritual leader, who had no 
message except at second hand, who had not even 
intellectual leadership, but he had a great way 
of shaking hands; when he met you he gave you 
the impression that he had thought about no one 
but you for a month, though you had never oc- 
curred to him, and he would cross the street in 
the mud to greet a parishioner and ask about the 
baby. Still he was a good man. John Ruskin 
says that a clergyman is the only workman in 

52 



whom any incompetency is excused by saying that 
he is a good man. 

I know another minister, able, devout, inspir- 
ing, conscientious, and truthful, who was a nat- 
ural recluse, diffident and embarrassed in com- 
pany, and who had never been within miles of 
the Blarney Stone. He lost one holding after 
another, and is now out of a pastorate. 

Instances where the most capable man in the 
state is chosen senator are rare. We send to the 
legislature or city council the "good fellows" in- 
stead of the good officials. 

Perhaps it will be so till the end of time. It 
is a queer quirk in human nature, yet a natural 
one. We all like to be flattered. A little atten- 
tion goes a long way with us. And it is so easy 
to imagine that the person who can increase our 
self-respect is a remarkable being. 

Even in marriage it sometimes seems as if 
the girls who can most easily catch husbands 
make the poorest wives, and that the women 
really gifted in wifehood and motherhood are 
passed by. Likewise the lady-killing men who can 
pick and choose what wife they fancy are the 
least qualified to make a woman happy. As a 
rule it is only when men and women are so old 
it is too late that they are competent to judge 
sound wife or husband timber. 

It is rather difficult to point any moral to this. 
It is one of those jagged facts we must adjust 
ourselves to. But at least we can learn this: 

53 



that we should seriously try to prevent any one's 
effect upon us from influencing our judgment of 
his ability or worth. 

Because a man does not like me is no sign he 
is bad. Because he offends me is no proof he 
cannot do his work well. And because a candi- 
date smiles on me is no evidence he ought to be 
mayor. 

Yet how few of us can come to this height of 
judicial honesty! I for one cannot. It is well 
nigh impossible for me to keep from thinking a 
man is great, or a woman is attractive, when he 
shows me he considers me a superior person, and 
when she gives me to understand, in woman's 
way, that she considers me rather interesting. 



54 



PROFESSIONALISM 

As a rule I appreciate slang as being language 
in the making. It is forceful and vital, as crude 
things are apt to be. But there is one word now 
in vogue among the slang users to which I se- 
riously object. It is the word "classy." 

To call a hat or a tie or a young lady classy 
implies that the object in question is excellent 
because it has class distinction. 

The one thing beautiful in our steaming, boil- 
ing, slap-dash democracy is that it is fatal to 
classes. 

This is why professionalism of any sort jars 
upon us. 

You may like some preachers, for some are 
almost human and really charming, but the clergy- 
man who dresses, talks and walks with the ob- 
vious consciousness of his class upon him, who 
oozes ecclesiasticism, is rather trying. 

You like sport once in a while, doubtless; to 
go to the ball game or chess match; but it is 
unpleasant to be called a sport, when the term 
implies that you are of a certain class that wears 
fat diamonds and chocolate colored cuffs. 

The theatre is amusing, occasionally instructive, 

55 



but you do not want to be known as a "profes^ 
sional theatregoer"; and what can be more ap- 
palling than the boy of a certain age, who knows 
the names of all the actresses, collects their pic- 
tures, and reeks of greenroom gossip? Nothing; 
except a girl who does likewise. 

Business men are pleasant enough when they 
are not too successful, but how do you like to 
be caught in a corner in a restaurant at lunch 
time between two cloak dealers who whip-saw you 
for an hour with shop talk? 

Therefore let us not talk business. If we 
have a few moments to spare, come, let us regu- 
late the universe. 

Don't try to rouse me to the glories of my 
little sect. Don't, between friends, glorify the 
party. Don't appeal to family pride. The hu- 
man soul is too big to belong to anything except 
occasionally, for certain temporary ends; all 
things belong to it. 

The only really interesting thing is a human 
being. Whether he wears a uniform or not makes 
no matter. There's an organ grinder who per- 
forms under my window with whom I have con- 
versed and who is vastly more interesting to me 
than the fat, bald and rich tailor who is the 
grand high worshipful of the lodge, and who 
hasn't entertained a new idea since 1883. 

I pine to be a member of the Concatenated 
Order of Mankind. 

I like to labor, but I detest being called a labor- 

56 



ing man. I work for a living, fat work, too, and 
slim living, but I am no "working man." I 
have a few dollars in the bank, but I deny that 
I am a "capitalist"; I lack the fishy eye. I like 
to meet the boys around the festal board and swap 
stories and sing songs, and I enjoy an automobile 
ride and a good show, but heaven deliver me from 
being a professional "good fellow." I try to be 
religious, but if you knew my church you would 
immediately know forty things about me that are 
not so. I loathe labels, classes and soul-smother- 
ing conventions, but equally loathe the idea of 
being classed among the unconventional. "Bo- 
hemians" as a rule are they that love to classify 
themselves as unclassifiable, which perhaps is 
worse than any other kind of class. 

Why cannot a body be just a plain Man, or 
Woman, a Human Being? Is it necessary to 
reduce me to number 23, shelf A, pigeon-hole 7? 

They do that sort of thing in penitentaries. 



57 



FUNCTION AND FACULTY 

Function precedes faculty. 

That is to say, the doing of a thing comes be- 
fore the ability to do the thing. 

This is a pretty well established law in sci- 
ence. Animals did not first grow eyes and then 
see with them, but the order of evolution is pre- 
cisely opposite, and strange as it may seem it 
is nearer the truth to say that the development 
of the eye in animal organisms is the result of 
seeing. 

So also from the efforts of certain sensitized 
spots to perceive another kind of vibrations there 
came into existence the ear. 

Hence in the history of evolution struggle goes 
before strength, effort is the parent of power, 
and every one of our faculties is but the reward 
of countless ages of striving. 

The law of Nature, as well as of Scripture, is : 
"To him that hath shall be given." 

And as all the world is one fabric, and mat- 
ter and spirit are but warp and woof in the web 
of time, so the same law runs through the minds 
and the morals of men, through government and 

58 



society. In all these realms also it is only by 
doing that one becomes able to do. 

The way to acquire the ability to speak in 
public is — to speak in public; and the same is true 
of playing the violin, painting pictures, selling 
goods, or writing stories. 

We all admit this; we cannot help seeing it. 
But, curiously, when we approach larger affairs 
we become blind. 

When it comes, for instance, to democracy 
and its problems we follow the logic of the ma- 
ternal advice in the jingle. 

Mother, may I go out to swim? 

Yes, my darling daughter; 
Hang your clothes on a hickory limb — 

And don't go near the water ! 

In other words, we do not want the people to 
be entrusted with the business of self-government 
until they are fit to govern themselves. Such 
was the talk in high and mighty circles when we 
were confronted with the task of providing a gov- 
ernment for the Filipinos and Porto Ricans. 

Such has been forever the talk of certain states- 
men in all crises. It is this sentiment that has 
devised those "checks" upon popular government 
that characterize all countries. 

The theory is that people should first become 
wise and prudent; then they may safely govern 
themselves. 

59 



And it is this theory that is false, unscientific, 
specious, vicious, and always the friend of special 
privilege and graft. 

The truth is that a people becomes fitted for 
self-government, becomes wise, prudent, and 
competent, only by actually governing itself. 

The only school for democratic government 
is — democratic government. Precisely as the 
only way to learn how to swim is to jump into the 
water. 

The one feeling that develops power and 
judgment is responsibility. 

The greatest educator of bears and human 
creatures is danger. 

The very thing a nation does not need is the 
strong arm, the wise leader, the man on horse- 
back, Carlyle's king-man, or any such. 

What the people need is uncomplicated, quick, 
simple methods of bringing each public question to 
their notice, and of saddling the responsibility of 
deciding such questions directly upon them. 

It is the indirections of American government 
that have created the boss. 

The only cure for the evils of democracy is 
more democracy. 

Function precedes faculty. The more people 
are compelled to govern themselves the more they 
become competent to govern themselves. 



60 



SYSTEM AND COMFORT 

Let us converse a while upon the theme of 
just being comfortable. 

There are times of course to discuss the serious 
questions of duty and self-culture and other soul- 
saving and character-building issues; but for a 
minute or two let us speak peaceably one to the 
other upon the little every-day matter of feeling 
good. 

Take, therefore, this small hint. System is the 
mother of comfort. 

Perhaps you read that sentence too rapidly. So 
let's have it again, in a paragraph all to itself. 
And in capitals. 

System is the Mother of Comfort. 
It is a psychological law that to do things the 
same way and at about the same recurring hour 
every day develops the minimum amount of brain 
fag. What you do by routine does itself. 

The hardest thing in the world to do is to do 
as you please. 

That is why the pleasure seekers, those who 
have nothing to do but to amuse themselves, are 
usually the most bored of people. Also it is why 

6j 



letter-carriers and brick-masons and wage-earning 
folk generally are cheerful. 

Take up your most intimate concerns and see 
how system smoothes out life. 

In the business of getting out of bed in the 
morning, for instance, the performance is much 
pleasanter for those who rise regularly at 6 than 
it is for those who don't have to get up till they 
get ready; for the simple reason that one who 
rises at a stated hour every day never thinks about 
it at all, and the dawdler has to make up his mind 
every morning. 

If you have a certain place for each article 
of clothing, and if each piece is put where it be- 
longs when you undress, the process of dressing 
again becomes easy. 

Of course one can carry neatness too far; one 
can carry anything too far; but that is no reason 
for not carrying it far enough. 

The girl who drops everything where she hap- 
pens to have finished with it and who consequently 
never can find her gloves, hatpins, shoes, handker- 
chief, and purse, is simply a fool; for she is wast- 
ing vital heat on something that need not have de- 
manded any effort at all. 

Just to form the habit of putting a thing in 
its own place when you are done with it would 
bring almost as much solid comfort as a million 
dollars to the average person. 

It is not my work that kills. It is confusion. 

The confusion breeds fret. 
62 



And fret is sand in the ball-bearings of the 
axle of the soul. 

No one ever gets half the efficiency out of his 
life without order. You have no notion of your 
ability until you have learned system. You can 
study, work, play the piano, learn languages, be- 
come a skilled mechanic or an interesting writer, 
perhaps, by adopting routine. Certain it is that 
without routine you will never amount to anything 
in the world's work. 

Plan your days. Plan the day. Let each day 
be a miniature life. Have your task as finished 
each night as you would have your life-task fin- 
ished at death. 

Then you can sleep. You will not be tossing 
on your pillow, worrying over the day's tangles, 
perhaps recalling those lines of Robert Louis 
Stevenson : 

I do my work with rough edges ; 
Sunset always comes too soon. 

Don't forget! it is not for highly moral rea- 
sons that system is here recommended, not to make 
ourselves sublime and all that, but — just to be 
comfortable. 



63 



IGNORANCE AS A FINE ART 

Instead of being always a calamity, igno»- 
ranee is sometimes the source of power, of use- 
fulness and happiness. 

It is the one with will power enough to refuse 
to know certain things that can know accurately 
certain other things. No boy can be a student 
who cannot concentrate his mind on the book be- 
force him and shut the door of his attention to 
the conversation going on about him. 

If the cook knows what is going on in the 
parlor, if she is aware of what her neighbors 
across the way are up to, and if she watches the 
parade in the street, she is a poor cook and will 
probably burn the roast. 

This is the day of specialists. A specialist is 
one who does not know the vast areas of general 
practice. He advertises his ignorance. When 
one does that we believe he knows accurately his 
little island. 

Private Mulvaney, according to Kipling, thus 
tells the story of the taking of Lungtungpen: 
" 'Tis the bhoys — the raw bhoys that don't know 
fwat a bullet manes, an' wudn't care if they did — 

64 



thet do the wurrk. Wud fifty seasoned sodgers 
have taken Lungtungpen in the dhark thet way? 
Na ! They'd know the risk av fever an' chill, let 
alone the shootin'. But the three-year-olds know 
little an' care less; an' where there's no fear 
there's no danger." 

Who shall say how many a hero has leaped 
to fame simply because he didn't have sense 
enough to get scared? 

In the most intimate relations of life how val- 
uable is ignorance ! No one with sharp eyes can 
get along with children. The wise mother knows 
when to turn her back, and how to play deaf and 
blind. Believe it, she will see more in the long 
run than the mother that is too observing. One 
is never going to see much that is worth seeing 
in this life, until one learns how and when to 
shut one's eyes. 

If husband and wife are going to remain in 
love they will need a good deal of wilful blind- 
ness. In fact, the more they allow their fault- 
noticing faculty to atrophy the happier they will 
be, because then they will see those other things 
that really count. Those see the most who look 
the other way. At least when you "make it 
hearts." 

The monk in his cell is not altogether to be 
pitied. Possibly he is overdoing it; but we might 
learn from him that saving art of choosing our 
own world, of creating our own little autocosm, 
whither to take refuge on dark days. No one 

65 



knows the world aright who does not know how 
to leave it upon occasion. 

The power of the poet over us is due to his 
proud ignorance of the petty perplexities that 
bother us. Our souls are drowned in the rattle 
of pots and kettles, bales and boxes, the crash 
of affairs, and the din of tongues. If the poet 
knew enough to get his hair cut he could not 
speak to us. He can see only a peach blossom 
in the sunshine, hear only a whistling thrush in 
the hedge, detect only a tender heart swelling in 
a bashful breast, perceive only one great white 
ideal where we see the confusion of war, and 
penetrate the flux of things that distract us and 
find a golden purpose. 

And in the humble business of living, and being 
happy, and doing our daily work, the secret is 
the same; it is blessed, wisely chosen ignorance. 
We need the blind courage of the raw recruits 
at Lungtungpen, the narrow application of the 
specialist, the oblivious vision of the poet. 

There are so many things that don't matter! 

Others may say your old mother is blind, dot- 
ing, and foolish. She somehow never sees those 
faults everybody else dins in your ears, and which 
doubtless exist. But deep in your heart you have 
a notion that after all her eyes, with their divine 
blind spots, see the things in you that need seeing. 
Love knows what a fine, true art is ignorance. 



66 



FOOLING THE CHILDREN 

Let us admit it. Come, the printed page is 
impersonal, and confessions we would not dare to 
make one to another we may whisper with safety 
to our reputation and relief to our soul under the 
shadow of the pronoun we, which means every 
one of us except me and you. 

We are arrant humbugs. We are incurable 
hypocrites. What a show we keep up before our 
children. Who would want to sit down and tell 
his little boy — the whole truth about himself? 
Who desires his little girl to know him as he 
really is? 

Not that we are criminals. We are not so bad. 
We are just human. But we want our young 
ones to think that we are superhuman, impossibly 
consistent, living actually up to the appalling fault- 
less standards we teach them. 

At first we fool them. They really think we 
are paragons. Consequently they lie to us. They 
deceive us. Most filial dishonesty is caused by 
parental hypocrisy. 

We are afraid to be natural with our family; 
to admit frankly poor judgment, irritation, lazi- 

6 7 



ness, selfishness, weakness, and such faults. We 
have that curious twist in our rnind by which we 
value expediency above the truth. We are al- 
ways asking how this and that will "affect" the 
child, what "impression" will be made upon him. 
We want to throw "good influences" around him. 

Hence we embark upon a career of conscien- 
tious humbugging in the family, shamming from 
the noblest motives, thinking we are developing 
the morals of our precious ones by pretending to 
be what we are not. 

It might not be so bad if we could succeed. 
But we never do. The result is inevitable. We 
are found out. 

One of the commonest and saddest tragedies 
of everyday life is the alienation that develops 
between father and son, mother and daughter, 
when the child arrives at the age of twelve or 
fourteen. It is caused by the child's realization 
that the parent is after all not a paragon, but a 
plain, faulty common human being. 

Would it not be better to begin by telling the 
truth, acting the truth and living the truth? No, 
we answer promptly, we want our children to be 
better than we are. Most of the misery in this 
world comes from trying to make those we love 
better than we are. 

Our children need ideals, we say. So they 
do, and so do we. But we nor they need people 
who pretend to be ideal and are not. 

What the child wants, more than ideals, is 
68 



you. He needs to know you as you are, to grow 
up in candid friendship with you. 

Children's eyes, as God's eyes, see through you. 
They are unaffected, and their hearts go out to the 
sincere. That is why they would rather play with 
the ragamuffins in the alley than with "nice" chil- 
dren. The alley kind is real. 

After all the child problem is not so complex. 
The one thing needful is to be human and hon- 
est with children. They would love us if we 
would give them a chance. 

People shrink from the responsibilities of a 
family, so they say; in reality they shrink from the 
programme of pretence that they imagine the 
presence of children implies. 

Of course, we must try to be good when chil- 
dren are around. They call for self-restraint 
and clean speech and the common decencies. But 
let us not endeavor to be too good, impossibly 
good, nor seem to be. 

Let us be simply human. There is something 
better, if possible, than to be good; it is to be 
real. We cannot all be proper and highly moral 
and splendidly faultless; but we can be that which 
is more worth while to the child's heart and to 
his future; we can be genuine. 



69 



SAVING FAITH 

Saving faith, in the common theological sense, 
is not the subject under discussion. 

Whether or not a faith in a certain creed will 
save one's soul shall not here be considered. 

But there is a kind of saving faith everybody 
can understand and everybody believes in. And 
it is not the faith you have in somebody, but the 
faith somebody has in you. 

What is meant is this : Nobody ever does you 
any good, reaches, helps, and encourages you, 
except the one who believes in you. 

The only tonic, life-giving force that flows from 
man to man is appreciation. 

The benumbing, paralyzing, deadening force is 
contempt. 

To despise any man is to do all in your soul's 
power to ruin him. 

Anger, sullenness, and dislike are the hammers 
of the soul. 

Scolding and petulance are the destruction of 
children. 

Punishment and prisons are the ptomaines of 
society. Neither the offender himself nor the 

70 



people at large are done any good by degrading 
a man to the level of a beast. 

Believe in a child, and your faith shall save 
him, if anything can. 

Believe in men and women and you are uplift- 
ing the world, in the only way it can be uplifted. 

Even to believe in the man inside the criminal 
is the best way to cure crime. 

And it is easy enough. For all that is neces- 
sary, in order to have faith in any human being, 
is to understand him. And the way to under- 
stand him is to love him. 

Every soul is intrinsically lovely to any other 
soul that will faithfully try to know it. 

The only one qualified to help you, to teach 
you, or inspire you is the one who appreciates 
you. 

Look back on your own life. Count the peo- 
ple who have helped you. Every one of them 
believed in you. 

The faith-ray is the only redemption ray. It 
can pierce through any coverings of despair and 
evil. 

Of course, your enemies may have helped you, 
in a way; but it is the way the boy spoke of in 
his composition, when he said: 'Tins save the 
lives of many people — by not swallowing them." 
Fire saves you by making you avoid it, and cold 
by compelling you to resist it, and in this sense 
possibly the devil himself saves you. 

But the real life savers are the Appreciators. 
7i 



THE POSTPONEMENT OF LIFE 

Many of us are like the boy taking a "run 
and jump," who ran so far that he couldn't jump. 

We spend so much time and strength getting 
ready to enjoy ourselves that we never enjoy 
ourselves at all. 

We are like business men who break down 
brain, nerves, and body accumulating a fortune 
wherewith to take their ease, and when they are at 
last ready to play they discover they have lost 
the knack of it. 

Every day should be full orbed. It should 
have its own piece of heaven. When you go to 
bed at night you ought to be able to look back 
over the time you have spent since rising and view 
that sixteen hours or so as an experience complete 
in itself. 

With too many of us To-day is a fevered com- 
promise, a makeshift, something we have got 
through with we know not how, something to be 
forgotten as soon as possible. It is "to-morrow, 
and to-morrow, and to-morrow," and so life be- 
comes 

"a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing." 

72 



We have no joy but a sort of reaching for 
joy, no satisfaction but expectance, no comfort 
but hope. 

Would it not be better to give each day some 
kind of finish, as a good workman perfects each 
ornament of the temple? 

Every day has possibilities for the perfect exer- 
cise of life's functions. Emerson said, "Every 
day is a day of doom." 

Here are a few hints: 

First, remember that the one thing that has 
most to do with making life worth living is love. 
Let no day pass without some expression of af- 
fection. 

Don't postpone play. No day ought to go by 
without some moments of diversion. Play a 
game. Have a bit of chat with your neighbor. 
Do something useless each day, lest you become 
an enemy to the human race. 

Don't postpone physical exercise. It is not 
the occasional spurt of activity but the daily turn 
that counts in buttressing health and avoiding 
flabbiness. 

Don't postpone mental gymnastics. No mind 
should go a whole day without sweating over 
some knotty problem, some book hard to read, 
some genuine, solid thinking. 

Don't postpone beauty. The best-known soul 
food is admiration. Find to-day some cloud or 
flower or picture or face that warms you. Drop 
in at the picture gallery, or at least pause a mo- 

73 



ment at the art dealer's window. Never go to 
sleep without having seen some beautiful thing 
since the last sleep. 

Don't postpone work. Produce something use- 
ful, something of distinct value to the world, and 
if possible something the world is willing to pay 
for. The sanest thing any person can do is work, 
and for wages. 

Don't postpone laughter. A day without one 
good laugh is a bad day. No drug you can take, 
and no belief you can embrace, and no religious 
fad or new thought can do as much good for your 
health of soul and body as a real, hearty laugh, 
from the boots up. 

And don't postpone reverence. All about you 
every day of your life are the sky above and 
the earth beneath and human hearts around, and 
in them all are deep, great mysteries, quite be- 
yond understanding. Realize this to-day. The no- 
blest thoughts and feelings have ever come to 
us from the Infinite. It is the Infinite, if we let 
it into our minds daily, that keeps us from grow- 
ing petty, egotistic, pessimistic, and otherwise be- 
coming "demmed unpleasant bodies. " 

Now, isn't one day with a dash of all these 
ingredients a pretty good affair in itself? Think 
of it! A little love, a little play, a little bodily 
and mental exertion, a little beauty, a little work, 
a little laughter, a little wonder; what is that 
but a whole life iii a nutshell? 

74 



Live, as the carpenter might say, by the day 
and not by the job. 

For, after all, life is too much for any of us; 
but a day, well, we might manage that, perhaps, 
if we would. 



75 



THAT UNDYING HEATHEN 

The undying heathen is the man who knows it 
all. 

He is cocksure. He may be a cocksure sci- 
entist, or a cocksure religionist, or a cocksure 
anti-religionist. 

It is all the same. In any case he is deadly. 
Women, poets, lovers, enthusiasts, and children 
are suffocated by his presence. 

Knowledge has its place. It is well to have 
the mind's cellar stored well with facts. An en- 
cyclopedia on the book-shelf is valuable. But 
life's power and beauty are drawn from the great 
unknown, and not from the small known. 

The great inspirations of the world have al- 
ways come from the sky and the shadows. 

When Richard Wagner looked for themes for 
his trilogy (Siegfried, the Walkyrie, and Got- 
terdammerung, with the Rheingold prelude), he 
found them in the folk-lore of his people, in the 
twilight days, when there were not only men on 
the earth but also dwarfs under the earth, nymphs 
in the waters, and giants and gods mingling in 
human affairs. 

Every great epic poet dips his pen into the 

7 6 



past. He has to. It is the only ink that is dark 
enough. The present is too pale, too light. The 
future will probably be worse. 

Homer and Virgil and Milton sang of dim 
primal days. They are interesting. 

Every imaginative picture of the millennium 
is somewhat stupid, lacking ginger. 

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton wrote a story of 
the coming race, describing the humanity to be; 
and with sound perception observes that most of 
the fiction then will consist of tales of former 
times, when mankind was less perfect. 

Utopians promise us every blessing in the 
golden age to come except the sweetest of all 
blessings, reverent ignorance, and its handmaidens, 
poetry, wonder and worship. 

Reading More's "Utopia" or Edward Bel- 
lamy's "Looking Backward," one cannot resist the 
feeling that while life then will be very fine it 
will be rather boresome. 

It would certainly be wonderful to mix with 
intelligences that know everything, can explain all, 
and are surprised at nothing, and who have out- 
lived all the charming faults and perversions of 
this our humanity — it would be — for a while. 
Then we should want to go away somewhere with 
our old friend the Maine guide, who can trail a 
buck a hundred miles, but who asks you, when you 
speak of Botticelli, "whether that's a cheese or 
a fiddle." 

Even the conventional notion of heaven has 
77 



its drawbacks. The little girl, after her mother 
had described to her how perfectly grand and 
good heaven is, pathetically asked if she couldn't 
go down to the Other Place once in a while and 
play. 

Knowledge is a passing phase. Man journeys 
from ignorance to ignorance. He begins life 
knowing nothing; he becomes clever; then he 
grows wise, when he again realizes he knows 
nothing. 

The saints are people who wonder. The sages 
are people who are humble. The poets are the 
world's children. 

Socrates was fond of saying he knew nothing. 
Sir Isaac Newton said the same. 

Chesterton, in a recent verse, writes: 

When is great talk of trend and tide, 

And wisdom and destiny, 
Hail that undying heathen 

That is sadder than the sea. 



78 



OLD CLOTHES 

The only clothes that are really clothes are 
the old clothes. 

Men may be divided into two classes, those 
who have one suit and those who have more. 

With the purchase of the second outfit a man's 
slavery begins. 

When one has but a single coat it looks like him. 
When you see it, and his one vest and one pair 
of trousers, laid out on a chair at night, you are 
tempted to cry, as Michael Angelo exclaimed, 
looking at his completed statue of Moses : "Why 
don't you speak!" 

The one suit of clothes becomes creased to 
your personality. It is as much a part of you 
as your skin. 

Only the man with one set of garments may 
be said to be clothed at all, in any proper sense 
of the word: those with more wear uniforms. 

When you take clothes to a tailor to be pressed 
you might say: "Remove my ego. Steam away 
my characteristics. Iron out my personality. This 
suit is becoming like me. I am ashamed. I 
feel indecent. Reduce me to the herd level." 

Good clothes are the despair of artists. A 

79 



painter shudders when he is expected to portray 
a Prince Albert. When he paints for his own 
delight or for art's sake he invariably chooses the 
one-suited — the beggars by the Spanish stairs, the 
tatterdemalions and arabs of the street. 

And as for sculpture, its death blow was given 
by the invention of pantaloons. I can see that 
bronze statue of benign old Senator Hoar yet 
in my mind's eye as it sits by the city hall upon 
the common of Worcester, Mass. And I now 
recall in my memory what I always saw with my 
fleshy eyes, nothing of his face or mien, but only 
those metal "pants," looking for all the world 
like two grim cannon, ^upended, with the sena- 
torial feet sticking out of their muzzles. 

When you visit foreign parts the people you 
love most to observe are the "types," which means 
those who are real persons, each with one suit 
of clothes moulded to his personality. The smart 
set in the fashionable hotels, and the table d'hote 
set at the pension are the same the world over; 
they might be in Kokomo, Ind., or in Florence, 
Italy; they are all "men without a country." It 
is the common folks who are interesting. They 
alone are patriots. 

It is the common folks who are uncommon. 
The well dressed and much dressed are all alike 
— >"flat, stale, and unprofitable." 

The western cowboys, the Basque peasants, the 
gypsies, the Tyrolese mountaineers, the Bavarian 
country people, the London fishwives, the Pro- 

80 



vengal vine dressers, the shepherds of Syria, the 
Bedouins of the desert, and Lo, the poor Indian — 
all these are people it is worth while to know; 
whereas all the honorable gentlemen, monsieurs, 
signors, and misters, and particularly , all club 
fellows, nobles, and highmightinesses, why, one 
looks about like another. 

Women with forty gowns talk of loving clothes. 
The expression is not only untrue, it is hardly 
decent. The only woman who loves her clothes, 
with a pure, loyal, monogamic affection, is the 
woman who has but one dress to her name. 



81 



IT DEPENDS UPON THE MAN 

Everything, no matter what, depends on 
the man. 

The one thing in the universe that refuses to 
stay in its pigeon hole is a human being. 

You can find a man's name under the proper 
letter in the telephone book, but the man himself 
insists on wandering up and down through the 
alphabet of souls. 

"Vous voila !" exclaim the French, "That's 
you !" and shrug the shoulders, which is, perhaps, 
the most truthful way of recognizing the utter 
unclassifiable nature of you. 

If you say you hate the Irish, like as not you 
will meet to-morrow some Irishman who will 
stride gaily into your affections. 

When the young woman declares that she will 
never marry a short man or one with red hair, 
it is a well-known fact that it is the red-headed, 
short man that will one day carry her off. Her 
general principle remains intact, u only Charley," 
you know, is different. 

The one wayward, wilful, royal element in a 
person is personality. 

Every man is an exception. 
82 



I remember I was brought up in the belief that 
all southerners were rebels, wicked Legrees, who 
whipped slaves, and breathed threatenings and 
slaughter generally. Coming in later years to 
live in a neighborhood of them I was surprised 
to find them about the kindest, warmest, and most 
delightful people I had ever met. 

Human nature drives a coach and four through 
any generalization. 

When Harlow N. Higginbotham was credit 
man for Marshall Field I once had a talk with 
him at his desk. He was explaining to my curios- 
ity how he estimated the trustworthiness of a 
customer wanting credit. He showed me the 
books of rating, Dunn and Bradstreet, or what- 
ever they are, the system of credit reports, and 
the like. "Then," I remarked, "all you have to 
do is to see whether the man fits properly in 
the system?" "Oh, no," he answered. "I al- 
ways bring him in and talk with him and look 
him over. That's what counts finally." So even 
a huge business and dollars and cents depend upon 
the personal equation. 

No classification is safe. See the man. 

"That," said a great merchant once to me, 
"is the most disagreeable clerk about my place. 
He breaks my rules. He makes trouble. He is 
lazy. He is about everything I don't want him 
to be." 

"Then why do you keep him?" 

"Well, it's funny, but he does more business 

83 



than any two men I have. He gets things done. 
He's the one clerk here who is worth twice his 
wages." 

And if it all depends upon the man, still more it 
all depends upon the woman. 

Beauty, rosy cheeks, violet eyes, a divine form, 
and a low, musical voice are supposed to make 
a woman irresistible. But it is singular how the 
boys have a way of passing by the classic beauty 
and taking up with the snub-nosed, ill-shaped, and 
homely minx. Not that unbeauty is more attrac- 
tive than the angel face; it isn't; but it all depends 
on the woman. 

Dr. John Brown relates how that Sir Joshua 
Reynolds was taken by a friend to see a picture. 
He was anxious to admire it, and examined it 
carefully. "Capital composition; correct draw- 
ing; the color, tone, chiaroscuro excellent; but — 
but — it wants, hang it, it wants — That!'* snap- 
ping his fingers. 

The "That" is the individual touch. 

It is to your personality what flavor is to the 
apple. 

After all, the only thing about a man the 
world cares for is his individuality. Your ac- 
complishments and your possessions do not mat- 
ter much. 

It is the pearl of great price, the one treasure 
he has which no one else has ! 

In art it makes one's work great, in letters it 
makes one's writing worth reading, in business it 

84 



is the touchstone of success, in society it is the 
secret of popularity, in love it is the very core 
and substance, and in religion it is the keynote. 

All true education is to develop this, all true 
culture is to perfect it, all true religion is to keep 
it unspoiled. "For what shall it profit a man if 
he gain the whole world and lose" — That! 



8? 



REAL CHARITY 

Nothing is through and through good for 
the people that is not done by the people them- 
selves. 

This is a truth full of most nourishing and 
savory juice, and it would be well for us to chew 
it meditatively, to Fletcherize it well. 

We have come to look with suspicion upon so- 
called "charity." Doubtless we shall all need 
from time to time to relieve our neighbor's dis- 
tress, perhaps, but doling bread and soup and 
money, providing free Thanksgiving dinners for 
the poor, going about as Lady Bountiful, and in 
any other way giving alms has gotten to be, to 
the modern intelligently altruistic mind, question- 
able. 

Of course, giving to the poor is recommended 
in the Bible. But true obedience to the Bible's 
principles implies that we construe it with com- 
mon sense. In New Testament days beggars were 
a fixed by-product of monarchic government. The 
duty of a democratic Christian in the twentieth 
century is not to coddle poverty, but to remove the 
conditions that make poverty. 

We have not abandoned the teachings of Jesus; 
86 



we are trying to get those teachings in'io the state, 
to make them basic in social life. 

Beggary in the end is always pernicious. And 
alms-giving, which is the other half of beggary, 
and keeps it alive and thriving, is equally noxious. 

All "giving" is, as a rule, an excuse for evading 
the payment of the just debts of altruism. A man 
screws down the wages of his employees, refuses 
to make his mine or workshop sanitary, employs 
little children, gains money from sweat shops, 
and we call him a philanthropist when he gives 
the town a library. 

Real philanthropy is justice. 

No greater charitable institution ever existed 
than the American state. Think of the millions 
of children in the public schools, of the hundreds 
of youth in state universities, of the myriads of 
the unfortunate in asylums for the blind, deaf 
and the feeble-minded! That is real charity be- 
cause it is the people caring for the people. 

To have some one endow us is as bad as to 
have some king govern us. 

Begging has become an elaborate system. Col- 
lege presidents are chosen for their expertness in 
this art. Preachers are gauged by their skill in 
securing money for the church. We cannot re- 
sist the feeling that it is all subversive of true 
manhood. 

Educational and religious institutions should 
not be dependent upon millionaires. They should 
be supported by the whole people. 

87 



And they who seek some programme by which 
the present enormous profits of private business 
shall in some way be returned to the people, to 
whom it rightly belongs, and be administered by 
the responsible representatives of the people in- 
stead of by the irresponsible exploiter, these are 
they who are the really charitable, these are they 
who express Christianity and its altruistic impulse 
in terms of modern democracy. 

Give us fundamental justice and you give us 
the noblest charity. 

Solve the governmental problem so that every 
man shall have opportunity, and the just reward 
for his work, no more and no less, and you have 
satisfied, in the only rational way in which it can 
be satisfied, the demands of Him who said: 

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren ye have done it unto 



me. 



88 



THE DEADLY MICROBE OF 
EXPEDIENCY 

Every animal, they say, has its parasite. 
Every living organism has its peculiar destructive 
microbe. 

The name of that particular bacillus which eats 
the life out Truth is — Expediency. 

The minute one asks "What's the use?" he 
ceases to be a scientist, an artist, or a moral per- 
son. 

For ages the world's highest thinking, or rather 
its thinking upon highest themes, was conducted 
on strictly immoral lines. For men asked not 
"Is it so?" but "Is it advisable to Say that it is 
so?" 

It is modern Science that has laid the world un- 
der an everlasting debt, by standing out for the 
theory that what is True must always and ab- 
solutely be best for us to know and to follow. 

Few realize that intellectual honesty is prac- 
tically a Modern Discovery, along with the tele- 
graph and the sewing machine. 

Historical accuracy, for instance, was hardly 
considered worth while before Niebuhr. In 
ancient and in mediaeval times men wrote histories 

8 9 



to be read, and made them as interesting as pos- 
sible; they cared little whether a thing was a 
Fact or not. Hence most old histories are unre- 
liable, and the more dramatic a story the more 
we suspect it to be false. 

They say that among the Turks, when one is 
asked a question, he does not frame his answer in 
accordance with the facts, but in accordance with 
the effect he wishes to produce upon his hearer. 

This is a good illustration of that state of 
ethics which prevailed generally before the era 
of modern science. 

Any system built on non-facts becomes a breed- 
ing ground for tyrannies and morbidities. 

When the mayor of Philadelphia was asked by 
the ministers to appoint a day of prayer to ward 
off the cholera, he answered very properly that 
to pray, while they neglected to clean up the city, 
would be blasphemy. 

Nothing cures cholera or any other disease but 
to know the truth about it and remove the cause. 
Precisely so, nothing cures worry, bad habits, evil 
passions, and all moral lesions but to find out the 
truth about the spiritual, psychological laws that 
produce them. 

There is no realm of human interests where 
strict scientific methods and scientific honesty are 
needed so much as the realm of morals. 

Morals are somehow profoundly affected by 
our personal relation to the Infinite, the Unknown, 
the Hereaftef. And the crying need of the age 

90 



is thorough scientific investigation of these re- 
lations. The most precious hopes and fears of 
mankind are entirely too precious to be left for- 
ever in the hands of Fiction, even the most de- 
voted and earnest Fiction. 



9* 



THE SPENDTHRIFT OF LOVE 

Don't economize in love. 

Love is the one exception. It is the one treas- 
ure that grows bigger the more you take from 
it. Love is the one business in which it pays to 
be a spendthrift. 

Give it away, throw it away, splash it over, 
empty your pockets, shake the basket, turn the 
glass upside down, and to-morrow you shall have 
more than ever. 

Love is like the barrel of meal and the cruse 
of oil of the widow of Zarephath, which the 
more they were drawn from the more they were 
increased. 

Love is like that manna which was fit food for 
angels, but would not keep. 

Allow no day to pass without giving love. To- 
morrow may not come, and if you should die 
to-night your loving deed will be the one thing 
you will be glad to remember. 

And the time to love, love's only time is — now. 

Do you like that fellow, that friend of yours? 
Go out of your way to do something that will 
warm his heart. Pass him at least a compliment. 

It may be your little girl. You are tired, per- 
92 



haps, and worried, and her young exuberance irri- 
tates you. But wait ! She is slipping away from 
you every minute. The time is racing toward 
you when she will be no longer yours, looking up 
to you for a drop of gentleness. So, take time. 
Give her five minutes, and a hug or two, and a 
warm word from dad to remember. 

Perhaps it is your boy. Some day you will 
want nothing more than that he confide in you 
and not withdraw from you. Therefore, invest 
now in some kindness and fellowship. Don't put 
it off. 

Maybe it is your wife. Never a woman lived 
that did not want a little attention to be prized. 
No matter how absorbed you are in important 
affairs, take a bit of time and consume it entirely 
in making that woman feel that she is the most 
interesting and vital affair in the world. 

Then there is your mother. If she sits by 
your fireside let no day pass without some mo- 
ments all hers. If she is away let no week go 
by without writing. 

When you go to bed at night you need not ac- 
cuse yourself that you have made no money, that 
you have not advanced in your career, that you 
have had no profit or play; but if you have spent 
a whole day without some expression of love to 
some human being you may well arise and devote 
some time to the profitable physical culture of 
kicking yourself. 

There are doubts about everything; doubts 

93 



about whether your food is good for you, or your 
drink, doubts whether your work was of any 
use or your play was not silly, doubts whether 
it pays to make money, or whether anything else 
you do is worth the candle; but about love there 
is no doubt; it is just plain good. God knows 
it's good, for He made the world for lovers. It 
has no rival, this true love that is frank, free, and 
honest, without shame or self. 



94 



RED HATS AND RED HEELS 

Here is a paragraph from Catulle Mendes 
which it will be well for every worker to meditate 
upon: 

"In France everybody is an aristocrat, for 
everybody aims to be distinguished from every- 
body. The red cap of the Jacobins is the red heel 
of the aristocrats at the other extremity, but it 
is the same distinctive sign. Only, as they hated 
each other, Jacobinism placed on its head what 
aristocracy placed under its foot." 

The idea that is here brought out, is that aris- 
tocracy is a Spirit, and not a condition in life. 
Just as greed is a spirit, and a poor man can be 
as fully a miser as one who has many a bag 
of gold, and can be a murderer at heart, though 
he lack the courage to take life, and one can be 
a thief yet afraid to steal. 

Nowhere is the spirit of aristocracy, which is 
entirely vicious and ignorant of the meaning of 
life, so disgusting as in its dregs and leavings, 
which are found among those who worship posi- 
tion and fame afar off. 

It is safe to say that the money-proud and 
birth-proud would soon tire of their mode of life 

95 



if it were not for the envy and admiration they 
excite among the so-called lower orders. If the 
vulgar crowd did not gape and cheer, royalty 
would quickly give up the practice of riding in 
gilt coaches, which as a matter of fact are far 
from comfortable. The duke would drop his 
grand ways if there were no audience of awe- 
stricken butlers and serving maids. 

The chief pleasure the millionaire gets out of 
his house with ninety-six rooms on the boulevard 
is the stir he makes with it in the breasts of the 
clerks and workmen; for really it is hard to see 
what real pleasure there can be in keeping a bri- 
gade of servants and living in a residence big 
enough for a boarding-school. So also there is 
no enjoyment in wearing jewelry and expensive 
hats and all such gear, per se; the enjoyment 
comes in the satisfaction of knowing that all those 
who cannot afford such things are green-eyed for 
them. 

There is therefore no sense in trying to reform 
society by exhorting the upper crust to put away 
display and extravagance. The trouble lies in the 
poorer classes. The rich are few, the poor are 
a multitude. If the multitude should wake up 
some morning and cease to admire and covet the 
tinsel, the next morning the rich would cease to 
parade it. Consequently, it is the poor who need 
reformation. It is always the poor who need 
the gospel. For they alone will listen. 

One of the characters in Galsworthy's "Frater- 

96 



nity," a gentlemen named Hilary, had a bust of 
Socrates in his study, and describes it as being 
"so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending 
the whole of human life, sharing all man's glut- 
tony and violence and rapacity, but sharing also 
his strivings toward love and reason and serenity. 
He is telling us," Hilary continues, "to drink deep, 
to dive down and lie with mermaids, to lie out on 
the hills under the sun, to sweat with helots, to 
know all things and all men. No seat, he says, 
among the Wise, unless we've been through it all 
before we climb. That's how he strikes me — not 
too cheering for people of our sort!" 

And, to return to our beginning, would it not 
be as hard to conceive of Socrates wearing the 
red hat of the Jacobin, that is, railing at and envy- 
ing the Magnificent Ones, as it would be to con- 
ceive of him as wearing the red heels or other 
gimcracks of the Lofty? 



97 



TRAINING THE INSTINCTS 

"Our instincts, " writes a noted scientist, "are 
the root of our ethics, and just as hereditary as 
the form of our body. We eat, drink and repro- 
duce not because mankind has reached an agree- 
ment that this is desirable, but because, machine- 
like, we are compelled to do so." 

Those who are everlastingly reasoning about 
their souls and bodies, with rules of diet and 
rules of mental exercise and rules of holy living, 
usually become abnormally developed. 

One should refrain from doing anything ra- 
tionally which might as well be done upon im- 
pulse. 

As a cat can see and a dog can smell far more 
perfectly than we, so our subconsciousness can 
attend to the ordinary affairs of our everyday 
life much more satisfactorily than can our intelli- 
gence. 

Of course, reason is the distinguishing mark of 
the human being. It should judge, dispose and 
regulate the movements of life. But it can easily 
be swamped in details, overworked in non-essen- 
tials, and from a blessing turn to a nuisance. 

If the president of a great railway should 

9 8 



putter about tending switches and driving spikes 
he would be a poor president and his company 
would soon go to smash. 

Reason is king, czar, president of the human 
personality. And king-business is different from 
servant-girl business. 

A man is strong in proportion as his instincts 
are true, quick and powerful. He is dependable 
if his instincts are normal and accurate. He is 
good if his instincts are good. He is mean if 
his instincts are mean. 

The real problem in life, therefore, consists in 
training the instincts. This is the function of 
reason. It is to develop this one and weaken 
that one, to take those long policies and plans 
that will in time bring the instincts about to where 
it wants them. 

The task before any man is one only. It is to 
get himself into a condition where he likes what 
he ought to like. It is to break the wild horses of 
passion to the saddle. It is to tame and use the 
impulses of his blood. 

The completely moral man, therefore, is not 
the one who does what he wishes not to do, but 
the man who has trained himself to wish to do 
what he ought to do. 

Then he sleeps when he is sleepy, eats when 
he is hungry, drinks when he is thirsty, is pleasant 
when so disposed, and angry when anger rises; 
he walks when his legs need unstiffening, works 
when desire calls, plays when he feels that is 

99 



needed to break the monotony, prays when the 
spirit moves, and altogether has got the heredi- 
tary, dumb, unintelligent forces in him to do nine- 
tenths of the work, and reserves his reason to 
come in only occasionally to decide some great 
matter. 

There are no bad impulses; there may be disor- 
derly and untrained impulses, but every push of 
the blood in us is useful. Instinct, desire, craving 
is the steam in the human engine. 

A great man has great appetites. If they are 
well-ordered he is a great good man. If they 
are wolfish and embittered he is a great criminal. 

But a bloodless man, without strong feelings, 
can never be great. He may occupy a great posi- 
tion, be a king on a throne or a money-power with 
bags of gold, but he himself cannot be great. 

Cease, then, regretting this or that fiery passion. 
Break it to harness. Learn how to drive it, in- 
stead of letting it run away with you, and you 
will live to thank God for it. 

Real culture is the intelligent development of 
the instinct-forces Nature has put in us. 



ioo 



THE DELUSION OF SAFETY 

One of those maxims that contains a most 
meaty kernel of truth is that whatever is safe is 
bad. 

As long ago as the days of Jesus the seer looked 
on the leading citizen, who had fat barns, and who 
lay back and said : "Soul, take thine ease, thou hast 
much goods laid up for many days," and the seer's 
eyes pierced the rotten core of security, and the 
seer's voice said, "Thou fool! This night, shall 
thy soul be required of thee. Then whose shall 
all those things be thou hast laid up?" 

It is bad for anybody to be safe; bad for a boy 
to be placed above want; bad for any human being 
to be endowed. 

When any one feels that his "calling and election 
are sure," the ethical results on him are harmful; 
it is apt to make him a prig, a Pharisee or a prose- 
cutor. A soul's most moral state is uncertainty. 

From uncertainty flow charity and sympathy and 
becoming humility. It is the army of the cock- 
sure that has ravaged the Church. 

Security has always been the argument of ty- 
rants, privileged classes and the advocates of lais- 

IOI 



sez-faire. We are told that czarism is better than 
revolution; slavery is quieter than negro freedom 
(so the Greeks had their asphalos duleuein), edu- 
cation is dangerous, religious absolutism and au- 
thority alone bring peace. 

The fact is, risk is life, and life is risk. Get 
where you are absolutely safe and you would as 
well be dead. Life is a great game; eliminate 
chance and you spoil the game; you become a 
useless lump. 

We sometimes say, "It is the uncertainty that is 
killing me. If I only knew I could keep my job, 
or that my boy would not go wrong, or that my 
business venture would prosper 1" And we actu- 
ally feel aggrieved, as though life owed us cer- 
tainty, and we were somehow wronged because 
we do not know. 

But surety is no part of the scheme of life. We 
are not put here to operate like machines but to 
take chances. 

The art of success is not to succeed surely every 
time, but to have always something else up your 
sleeve; to fall but to fall on your feet; to reckon 
always on missing and to be ready to strike again. 

This is what is called resourcefulness, which 
simply means knowing how to fail successfully. 

The nation itself is not to be secure and stable ; 
it is to be fluid and progressive. In absolutely 
fixed institutions is contained fixed fraud. The 
other side of governmental permanency is cruelty 
and oppression of the people. China is hard as 

102 



stone; America is elastic as a sapling; and the 
sapling grows, while the stone crumbles. 

The secure state, the unchanging creed, the es- 
tablished religion, the hereditary throne, the inde- 
pendently wealthy individual, the man with a life- 
employment, the life-occupant of any institution, 
whether poorhouse, prison, college, church or 
court, are chrysalids; only when the shell is broken 
and they fly forth to danger are there life and 
beauty and motion and joy. 

So the next time you are disposed to complain 
of the uncertainty of things, remember that uncer- 
tainty is an essential element in the universe, or- 
dained to make you play the man. 

Birth means that the mother shall go down to 
the gates of death; marriage means sailing be- 
tween dangerous rocks; love is as full of danger 
as battle ; health runs an eternal gauntlet between 
diseases; faith is a ceaseles fight with doubts; 
business is crowded with possibilities of failure; 
money is skittish as a colt; and death comes no 
man knows when or where. 

You could not be safe if you wanted to, but 
you can be what is infinitely better, you can be 
Brave, and if you are Brave you can be Happy. 



103 



GEOGRAPHICAL LINES 

The story is told of Bill Nye that when he 
went sight-seeing up Lookout Mountain the boy 
who was acting as guide told him that from the 
summit where they were standing they could see 
four states. 

"Let's see 'em," said Bill. "Where are they?" 

"That," said the boy, "is Tennessee, that yon- 
der is Georgia, that is Alabama, and that is North 
Carolina." 

"No, you don't," replied Bill, shaking his finger 
at the youth. "You may stuff some folks with 
that, but not me. I studied geography in school, 
and I know that Tennessee is yellow, Alabama is 
green, Georgia is blue, and North Carolina is 
red. I'm sure North Carolina is red," he added, 
"for I helped paint it red myself last week — 
Me and Bill Vischer." 

I remember very well the first time I crossed 
the boundary line of my native state of Illinois 
into Indiana, and how surprised I was to find no 
"line" at all; not even a fence; nothing but a 
muddy stream; to discover also that the ground 
was the same colore 

Since then I have learned that more things 
104 



than geographical boundaries are purely imag- 
inary. 

Brought up a protestant, I was amazed to find, 
when still quite a lad, that Roman Catholics are 
just as human and kind as Methodists. 

Another shock came when it was revealed to 
me that one of the gentlest, wisest teachers I 
ever had was a Democrat; I had thought all 
Democrats chewed tobacco and carried guns. 

One by one I have seen the partitions of hu- 
manity's house fall. I have found that the peo- 
ple in every class room are "just folks." 

I have lived in a family of Italian wage workers 
in Tivoli, I have sat at the mahogany table of an 
Italian prince, I have mingled with German farm- 
ers at the Pasing Fair, I have dined with English 
nobility and passed the night at the house of an 
English shopkeeper. I have visited with the Presi- 
dent of the United States, senators, mayors, and 
governors, and have also sopped my bread in the 
bacon gravy at the woodchopper's family board in 
Sangamon County, and as far as I can see there 
is no difference; that is, none to speak of. A 
bright boy could adjust himself to any of these 
situations in a week or so. Social barriers are 
also imaginary geographical lines. 

We are learning, too, that all sciences shade 
into each other. Pasteur was a chemist and slid 
over accidentally into biology. Metchnikoff was 
a zoologist and became the discoverer of immu- 
nity from disease. 

105 



Nobody knows where the vegetable kingdom, 
leaves off and the animal kingdom begins. 

Who can put his finger on the line that runs 
between socialism and democracy? 

What is the difference between the Democratic 
and the Republican party? A prize will be given 
for any answer at all. 

The fact is that classifications of all kinds are 
merely mental "labor-saving machinery." They 
are useful for purposes of discussion, just as Ken- 
tucky's difference from Tennessee is useful for 
purposes of taxation. 

But we're all folks. We all love and hate, 
laugh and cry, eat and sleep. Girls and boys love 
about the same way in Teheran and Texas, at 
European courts and Iowa crossroads. 

Every mother loves to look at her baby, and 
every baby smiles back at its mother, and the 
good God is over us all. 



r lo6 



PAY! PAY! PAY! 

When an old negro saw a camel for the first 
time in his life he gazed awhile at its absurd hump 
and absurder face, as it munched straw in the cir- 
cus tent, and turning away, declared, "They hain't 
no sech animile!" 

The next time you think you see a gift, the next 
time you fancy you have got something for noth- 
ing, you will do well to repeat the darky's remark, 
for "they sure hain't no sech thing." 

No mortal man ever got anything he did not 
pay for. 

If you do not pay in one way you pay in an- 
other; if not by the labor of your hands, then by 
the misery of your mind; if not in money, then in 
service; if not in service, then in humiliation. 

The cheapest and most satisfactory way to get 
anything is to pay cash. 

Father Abraham, head of the Jewish race, was 
wise with the shrewdness of that keen-eyed people. 
When he was returning from an expedition in 
which he had overtaken and punished certain 
thieves that had been preying upon honest farm- 
ers, one of his neighbors met him and offered 
him a present. But Abraham was long-headed, 

107 



and replied, "I have lifted up my hand to heaven 
and sworn that I will take nothing that is thine 
lest thou shouldst say, I have made Abraham 
rich." 

No man is rich enough or poor enough to as- 
sume an obligation he is not able, glad, and pre- 
pared to discharge in full. An unpaid obligation 
corrodes the self-respect, and loosens the cords 
of character. 

There is really no such thing as a gift. Every- 
thing must be paid for, drop for drop, ounce for 
ounce, somehow, some time. When you are threat- 
ened with a donation, legacy or anything for which 
you are to pay nothing — run! 

When you see a man you envy, who has auto- 
mobiles and diamonds, wonder within yourself 
how much they have cost him. Then go home, 
examine your own stores of health, manhood, love, 
and clean conscience, and ask yourself, "Have 
I anything to sell?" 

For you must pay, pay, pay ! Nothing is gratis. 
Not even Nature gives. Nature never cancels a 
debt. You may think you have evaded her, but 
you are mistaken. No man was ever clever 
enough. Take your nights of dissipation; you 
may have alcoholic buzzing joys and all the other 
vivid pleasures of excess ; Nature will sell you any- 
thing you ask; but may the Lord help you when 
you come to settle up! 

I sometimes think the entire credit system, at 
least as far as personal and household expenses 

108 



are concerned, is the proud, peculiar invention of 
the Old Nick. How much downright suffering, 
family quarrels, lying, agony, and general ruina- 
tion has been caused by buying things without the 
instant, immediate pain of counting out the money 
for them ! 

Put it down in your books: A benefactor is a 
nuisance. The rich uncle's name is Bane. The 
"angel" is an angel of darkness. The greatest 
curse to a church is the rich brother who pays 
all the deficits. 

Pay as you go; and if you can't pay, don't go. 

The man who gives honest employment to a 
hundred workers will sit higher up in heaven than 
the man who feeds a hundred beggars. For the 
begging business, whether for individuals or for 
institutions, is vicious. 



109 



THE EXAMINATION HUMBUG 

The affair called an Examination is perhaps 
the prize humbug of the whole human show. 

At school, after a few weeks' study and recita- 
tion, the teacher gravely hands the student a 
printed list of questions, to which answers are to 
be written. In this way the teacher is supposed to 
find out what the pupil knows. 

In the first place, a teacher that can sit in the 
school-room daily for weeks with a child and can- 
not learn the child's capacity and know whether 
or not he is studious, ought to go out and work 
on the farm. 

In the second place, my ability to write down 
satisfactory answers to ten questions is no sort of 
test of my knowledge of a subject. 

It is psychologically wrong. Many a person 
may have a thorough command of a subject, and 
yet, when he gets his pen in his hand be unable 
to state it formally. A man may be an excellent 
physician, with unerring instinct in diagnosis and 
skill in treatment, and be paralyzed when he at- 
tempts to formulate his knowledge into a dozen 
paragraphs. Literary composition, the accurate 
expression of one's ideas, is one thing, and having 

no 



ideas, and being able to Use them, is quite an- 
other thing. 

One of the most gifted writers on naval affairs 
is a naval officer who was a dismal failure at run- 
ning a ship. His books are authorities, and they 
squeezed him out of the service for sheer incom- 
petency. And many an old salt could make a ship 
almost talk, maintain perfect discipline, and carry 
out the most intricate and dangerous manoeuvres, 
who could not for the life of him write a page of 
naval science. 

There is only one way to ascertain whether or 
not a man is able to fill any position, and that 
is to try him and see. 

That is the method of the business house. There 
you will find only one test. The head of the firm 
asks but one question: "Can he make good?" 

Any other test is sheer nonsense. There is but 
one thing I want to know of any one whom I 
hire for a certain place. It is: "Can he do the 
business?" I don't care whether he can write the 
answers to a list of questions or not. I don't care 
if he is white or black, male or female, tongue- 
tied, bow-legged, or freckle-faced. All I want 
to know is: "Can he do the business?" 

I want to be the first to subscribe to the monu- 
ment fund for the benefactor of childhood who 
shall abolish examinations from schools. 



in 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE BEST 

The survival of the fittest is the survival of the 
best. 

Define morals as you please, explain them en- 
tirely away if you like, or reduce them to mere 
physico-chemic terms, as Dr. Jacques Loeb does in 
a recent number of the Popular Science Monthly, 
the fact remains that the human qualities called 
"good" are tougher, harder, more enduring and 
stubbornly persistent than those called "bad." 

Who calls them good? Who is to be the au- 
thority? There is no need of disputing over 
authorities, nor of analyzing motives until we re- 
duce them to their ultimate gases; just plain, com- 
mon sense will do. Ask the first ten decent hard- 
working men you meet on the street. Or take the 
teachings of Moses or Jesus. We will not con- 
tend that what they call good is the real good, but 
simply claim that what they called good is what 
civilized people as a rule accept as moral, and 
that this has proved itself the fittest to survive. 

In the long war of the centuries, for instance, 
kindness has steadily beaten cruelty and driven it 
step by step out of the life and customs of the 
race. 

112 



Kindness seems so mild and gentle, such a weak 
sister; and cruelty so whiskered, barbed, and fierce. 
One would suppose the soft little thing would be 
eaten up and done for straightway. 

Nothing but actual historic facts could convince 
us to the contrary. But those facts prove that the 
sweet and tender sentiment has ousted, routed, and 
put to flight the harsh and strong sentiment in- 
variably. 

For the progress of civilization is a record of 
increasing humaneness. In the ancient world, in 
the Roman coliseum for example, and in all cities 
throughout the Roman world, the favorite pastime 
for the populace was to witness wild beasts tear- 
ing one another and devouring human beings : 
time has left nothing of this, but the bull-fight of 
Spain and football in America. 

In mediaeval days nobles ravaged the common 
people with impunity; up to a few years ago slav- 
ery existed unchecked and the slave oligarchy ran 
the United States, dominated the senate, and con- 
trolled the courts. These conditions have been 
changed. 

Men can no more flog their wives, nor parents 
take their children's lives, nor ecclesiastics tor- 
ture heretics. 

Of course, there are cruelties and tyrannies 
enough still left, and in indirect ways "man's in- 
humanity to man" is yet active, for so long as 
there are selfishness, idleness, and luxury, there 
will be heartlessness. But the point is that there 

113 



is not so much as there was, and that generation 
after generation but illustrates the law that "the 
meek shall inherit the earth." Law becomes con- 
stantly more humane, customs gradually improve, 
the feeling against cruelty to animals, to women, 
to children and to all the weak, mounts higher 
every decade. 

And not only kindness but all the other elements 
of "goodness" win in the long game of evolution. 

Virtue is not only better than vice because some 
"authority" says so, but also because virtue out- 
lives vice, outwears it and outpopulates it. Dis- 
ease and pest and devitalization punish the un- 
clean, whether the pictures of Orcagna's hell are 
true or not. 

Honesty chases dishonesty from the arena of 
commerce, if for no other reason, because without 
honesty business is impossible. Without credit 
there can be no "big business," and without keep- 
ing word and promise no credit can exist. 

Hate seems much more dynamic than love, but 
the fiery and destructive passion has to give way 
before its gentle opponent for the simple reason 
that love is essential to life and hate is life's 
enemy. 

Explain morals how you will, therefore, call 
them God's law, or the invention of priests, or the 
"accrued caution of preceding generations," or re- 
solve them into the functions of salts and acids 
in the blood; it makes no matter; the outcome is, 
that in the long wrestle of human motives through 

114 



ages and centuries of social evolution the good 
conquers and outdoes the bad. 

The very struggle for existence makes the race 
better, because only the good guarantees exist- 
ence. 

The survival of the fittest applied to human be- 
ings and their motives means the survival of the 
best. 

The law of "natural selection'' is inexorable. 
And whether we call a thing good because it is 
selected by nature to survive, or whether we as- 
sert that nature selects certain things to survive 
because they are good, is tweedle-dee and tweedle- 
dum. 



115 



THE TRUTH 

The greatest known force is the truth. Truth 
is the only real reformer. 

Truth is the only genuine philanthropist. 

Truth is also the best life insurance policy and 
the best newspaper policy. 

Truth is the best literature, and makes the most 
interesting story. 

And truth is the only gospel that ever saved 
anybody, actually and not theoretically. 

The more we see of truth the more the con- 
viction grows upon us that it, and not we, is the 
force that gets things done. 

We don't need to battle for the truth, nor de- 
fend it; we need to know it, live it, love it, tell 
it, and let it alone. It will defend us. 

The older and wiser a man grows the more he 
is impressed that there is some vast "power not 
of ourselves" that accomplishes what needs ac- 
complishing. 

The will of man amounts to little. The will of 
destiny is very strong. Truth is the will of destiny. 

Most of the great deeds done by men have not 
been done by men who set out deliberately to do 

116 



great deeds. They were done by men who were 
simply looking for truth. 

Pasteur was not laboring with a view to bene- 
fit the race; he was hunting for the truth about 
germs; in doing so he uncovered a truth that has 
saved millions of live stock and human beings. 

Metchnikoff was neither "incited by egotism to 
become famous, nor inspired by altruism to re- 
lieve suffering humanity" when he uncovered the 
secret of long life; he was watching through a 
microscope "the blood corpuscles chase each other 
through the veins of an infant starfish," he was 
looking for truth; when he found it, blessing and 
honor came as by-products. 

"Seek first the truth, and all these things shall 
be added unto you." 

The whole science of medicine has been up- 
turned within the last generation or so. Physi- 
cians no longer seek to "do good" to their patients ; 
they try to find out the truth about their patients, 
for they know that only the truth can do them 
good. 

The human race is waking up to realize that 
what it needs is not philanthropy, not sacrifice, 
not rebellion, not heroes and leaders and reform- 
ers; all it needs is to quit lying, and to do away 
with all organized, ancient, and honorable false- 
hoods. 

Trust, competition, government 'Ownership, or 
this or that, is not the cure for the ills of busi- 
ness. The real remedy is plain, old-fashioned hon- 

117 



esty, and square dealing. Crookedness or injus- 
tice in any form is sure blood poison to business. 

Nobody can afford to believe anything that is 
not so, no matter how pleasant it may be. 

Nobody but a fool sings, "Oh, do not wake me, 
let me dream again!" 

No soul can expect happiness in a faith, reli- 
gious or otherwise, which is u an autocosm without 
facts," to use a Zangwillism. 

There is no peace in any sort of a delusion. The 
devil is the father of lies. 

Peace, joy, comfort, content, happiness, and 
health, all are permanent boarders in truth's 
house. 

There is no political liberty, no social liberty, 
no personal liberty that is not founded on the 
truth. All lie-liberties, all expediencies, are spider 
webs; our souls are the flies. 

"Ye shall know the truth," said the greatest of 
teachers, "and the truth shall make you free." 



118 



PUNISHMENT 

The world moves, but moves slowly. Espe- 
cially does it take a moral fact, a psychological 
law, a spiritual truth a long, long time to soak into 
the common mind of men. 

For a hundred years or so there is a fact about 
humanity that has been trying to find lodgment in 
the consciousness of civilization. 

It is the fact that punishment never does any 
good. 

Jesus, with his marvellous vision, saw it and 
stated it. "Thou hast heard that it hath been 
said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, 
but I say unto you, return good for evil." 

Though the western world has professedly been 
"Christian" for a thousand years and over, it 
has never gotten to the point where it believed 
that Jesus meant just what He said. 

To cure crime by helpfulness and not by ven- 
geance has been always supposed to be extrava- 
gance for individuals and an impossibility for 
governments. 

It seems the most natural thing in the world 
that if a man strikes me I should strike him, if 

119 



he murders he should be murdered, if he wrongs 
society he should be hurt. 

Here it is that the scientist, the psychologist, 
the man who looks only for truth and is undis- 
tracted by feeling, is the man to whom we must 
turn for the solution of our problem. 

Viewing the matter with calm scientific^ intelli- 
gence we get right back to the truth Jesus enun- 
ciated, to wit: — that hurtfulness is curable only by 
helpfulness, that two cruelties do not* make one 
kindness, and that the only possible way to wipe 
out the harm of evil is to do good to the evil- 
doer. 

When one injures me my impulse is to injure 
him in return. But when I examine this impulse, 
and weigh its value, I find it is a mere survival of 
the brute in me ; it is the hornet, wasp, mule, rattle- 
snake, and savage in my blood. 

Carried out as a universal programme it means 
a society that is chaos; fueds and brawls are the 
rule; law is impossible. 

This we admit perhaps in church, but deny in 
the courthouse. Yet it is as true one place as 
another. 

When society hangs a man it is simply gratify- 
ing its lust for vengeance. The action is on a 
level with kicking a horse in the belly because 
he has kicked at you. 

When we sentence a man to ten years or more 
in the penitentiary we say in substance: "This 
man has wronged the community, therefore will 

I20 



we imbrute him, crush out all his better nature, 
and make of him a beast and a hardened crim- 
inal." 

What's the use? What good does that do us 
except to gratify our desire for retaliation? 

The argument for punishment, of course, is that 
it discourages and estops crime. 

That cannot be discussed. It is a waste of 
time. But any one who will cease telling his 
"opinion," and honestly study the facts of crimi- 
nology, will see that harsh punishment invariably 
causes increase and not decrease in crime. 

It is a curious fact, but absolutely indisputable, 
that, 'in the history of law, crimes have dimin- 
ished in proportion as punishments have been 
made milder. 

The fundamental cure of crime is the ethical 
education of the youth. Education that is not 
moral training is a humbug. Only when the af- 
fections and the will are developed, as carefully 
as schools now develop the intellect, will we get 
at the root of crime-prevention. 

We must learn that a wrong-doer is a diseased 
soul and needs not torture but training, for our 
own sakes as well as his. 

In a hundred years from now our barbarous, 
ignorant system of jails, penitentiaries and gal- 
lows-trees will be relegated to the limbo of the 
stocks, the wheel and the rack; in their stead we 
shall have schools for the healing of perverted 
wills and emotions. 

121 



MEDIEVALISM IN LITERATURE 

The essence of medievalism was — class. 

The essence of modernism is — democracy, to 
be written with a little d. 

To the medieval minded, the common people 
do not exist. 

Dante's Divine Comedy is a long, rhymed 
Who's Who in 1300. 

Literature those days never mentioned, except 
with an apology, saving your presence, "anybody 
less than ambassador," as somebody said of some- 
body. 

The great artists, even in the renaissance, never 
portrayed plain folks, only dukes and popes, 
Medici and saints. 

When music arose and found itself, its great 
masters kowtowed to the magnificences; Mozart 
freezes his heels waiting in the audience room of 
silly and idle duchesses, and the mighty Beethoven 
dedicates a sonata to some royal ass to give it 
vogue. 

Medievalism lingers. The sickness is still in 
our veins. If you don't believe it, read the Paris 
edition of the New York Herald. If you can- 
not get hold of a copy of that amazing yellow 

122 



plush daily, read the society columns of almost 
any Sunday paper. 

The other day I saw in a Chicago Sabbath 
sheet the pictures of the ten most beautiful girls 
of the city. Not one of them was worth less 
than a million; that I suppose was their beauty; 
it certainly was not in their faces ; you could easily 
pick out ten waitresses that would eclipse them, if 
you really wanted to see pretty girls. 

The most popular thriller in the fifteen cent 
magazine to-day still treats of club fellows, dress 
shirts, and gobs of money. This doubtless catches 
the mob or it wouldn't be written. But, to me, 
the cheapest, tawdriest device of a story-maker 
is the bringing in of the millionaire or the famous 
person or the society leader to stimulate the read- 
er's jaded eye. 

The best American novel I ever read was Old 
Ed Howe's "Story of a Country Town." It was 
real. It had real meat insides, not sawdust. 

And the greatest novelist of the world is 
Charles Dickens. He wrote of real folks. 

"The mortal envelope of the Middle Ages," 
says Catulle Mendes, "has disappeared, but the 
essential remains. Because the temporal disguise 
has fallen, the dupes of history and its dates say 
that medievalism is dead. Does one die for chang- 
ing his shirt?" 

The rise of democracy is nowhere more notice- 
able than in modern literature. There is a tone, 
a spirit, in Zola, Kipling, Ibsen, Anatole France, 

123 



and Howells that never existed before in the 
world. It is the worth-whileness of the common 
man. 

Realism does not mean that one writes of low, 
disgusting people. It means one writes of real 
people. 

Realism, in its better significance, simply means 
what is real. 

Democracy is a realization of the truth about 
humanity, a discarding of the artificialities, shams 
and humbugs. 



124 



FAITH 

The greatest element that goes to make suc- 
cess in a man is Faith. 

This does not mean a belief in this or that doc- 
trine, but the very essence and juice of Faith itself. 

Real Faith, the kind that boosts a man, that 
bears him up in its hands over stones and ditches 
where others fall, is a habit of mind, a quality of 
life, an inside spirit. 

Faith means first the realization that there are 
great, cosmic laws that govern souls, and that 
these laws are just as unerring and sure as the 
laws of gravitation or mathematics. 

These laws are as old as the world. Every 
religious seer has but re-stated them. They are 
the gist of Buddha, Moses, Jesus and of every 
great soul. 

They are such as these: Honesty always pays. 
Sensual excess always debases. Love is the most 
potent force in the world. No man can really 
injure you but yourself. Truth is stronger, tougher 
and more long-lived than any lie. The world is 
steadily growing better. You yourself cannot pos- 
sibly fail if you are unafraid and true. 



These sound like platitudes. They might be in 
a copy book. They are old. 

But they are the newest, most alive things in 
the world to-day. 

If you believe in them and intrust your life to 
them you will succeed — not probably, but just as 
surely as two and two make four. 

If you disbelieve or doubt them you are lost 
already. It is only a question of time till your 
heart is dust within you and your mouth is full 
of ashes. 

The difference between youth and old age is 
not a matter of years, but of faith. He who be- 
lieves in himself and in the moral accuracy of the 
universe is young, even at seventy. He who doubts 
men and goodness is old at twenty. 

Sometimes it is said that this is an age of 
young men. The kernel of this saying is that 
this is an age where faith is indispensable. 

The great world of business and work and en- 
terprise has no place for the coward. 

Experience is a good thing, but an ounce of 
faith is worth a ton of it. 

Prudence is an excellent virtue, but one drop of 
ruddy courage is of more use in getting the world's 
work done than a barrel of it. 

The reason why old people must die is that 
they lose faith. Nature then kindly removes 
them. In her vast plans she wants faith. She 
finds it in youth. 

The secret of a green old age, full of sap and 
126 



vigor is — faith in one's self, faith in one's fellows, 
faith in the moral purpose and power of the uni- 
verse. 

Salvation by Faith is not merely a religious 
formula. It is a psychological law. 

Children are reeking with faith. That is why 
they are happy and hopeful. 

The thing that impresss you in the successful 
business man is his radiant confidence. 

All great poetry smells of faith. 

Faith is the heart of literature, the soul of art, 
the inner secret of making a good bridge, a sound 
bank and a prosperous railroad. 

Don't you think for one moment that this is an 
utterly materialistic age ! There is no greater 
mistake. 

The faith-pressure is ten times greater in this 
Twentieth Century than it was in the tenth. Only 
it manifests itself in a different way. 



127 



THE HUMAN MAGNET 

Every soul is a Magnet. 

From it go out invisible, mysterious currents 
that attract certain things and repel certain other 
things. It is charged with life-force that is like 
electricity* positive and negative. 

A man will meet you, at home, in a hotel, or on 
the street, and as you talk together feel forty dif- 
ferent kinds of repulsion, irritation, anger and 
disgust oozing out of you. 

You say, "He rubs me the wrong way; he rouses 
all the bad in me, there's something about that 
fellow I don't like." 

There are certain women who when they move 
into the neighborhood, join your church, or be- 
come members of your woman's club are sure to 
set everybody by the ears. 

As there are "typhoid-carriers," who can spread 
the fever while they do not have it themselves 
so there are trouble-breeders who seem serene 
enough but have a born talent for stirring up a 
mess. 

There is a type of boy that disrupts a boarding 
school, a type of man that will split his lodge or 

128 



party, a type of girl whom quarrels follow as the 
cholera was supposed to travel in the wake of the 
Wandering Jew. 

All these are negative magnets. 

Then there is the positive. There is the girl 
who makes your heart laugh when you see her, the 
woman who, without effort, spreads peace, the 
boy whose very presence gladdens, and the man 
who is like "the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land." 

Is there any greater joy than to feel that as 
you mingle with your fellows you are just pour- 
ing wine into drooping spirits, encouraging those 
in despair, rousing hope in the despondent, and 
stirring up courage in the fearful? 

Really, it is about the most Simon pure, twenty- 
four caret, three star, guaranteed-under-the-pure- 
food-act happiness to be found in the pantry 
of the human race. 

And the first lesson any human being ought to 
learn is that he can make himself a positive mag- 
net. 

It is not a matter of temperament, of what is 
born in you, and of something one cannot help. 

Whoever thinks it is belongs to the Ananias 
club. 

All you have to do is deliberately to cultivate 
courage, cheerfulness and white thoughts. 

Swear off from ever saying or thinking such 
things as, "That's just my luck!" "Of course; 
that's just like me!" "Naturally, I am no good!" 

129 



Believe in yourself. Believe in your success. 
Put away like poison, every failure-thought. 

You must be full of positive currents of cheer 
and strength if you would rouse these currents 
in others. 

And you can accomplish this by your will and 
constant practice. 

You exercise your arms and legs and brain to 
strengthen them. Why not exercise your soul, or 
character, or heart, or whatever you choose to 
call it, to make that strong. 

Don't be a moral mollycoddle! Don't be a 
gloom! Pluck up! The world is yours, if you 
will not fear! 

You can be a positive moral magnet. And 
thus you can be happy. 

"The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, " 
says the good book, "and the violent take it by 
force." 



130 



THE CERTAINTY OF SUCCESS 

You cannot get character any other way than 
by winning it. 

Character is the one most important thing to 
acquire, and the one thing each person must get 
for himself. 

No substitute can procure for you the capital 
prize in the game of life. 

Your parents cannot give you character. You 
cannot give it to your children. It is every man 
for himself, and every tub on its own bottom. 

We can help one another, here and there, but 
not nearly so much as is generally supposed. 
Moral agencies and immoral are both over-rated. 
Character, at least, is "up to me." 

Heredity is overvalued. A man is so much 
more than a horse or a steer that human eugenics 
is a very imperfect science. One may inherit char- 
acteristics, but not character. 

You may derive red hair or blue eyes from 
your father, but your character is precisely what 
you make it. 

And for the winning of character all men are 
born with an equal chance. 

It is only in the lesser matters of life that one 
131 



child has at birth a better start than another. For 
instance, one baby can begin life with more money, 
better parents and sounder health than another. 
But the other, who is at all disadvantage, is quite 
likely to outstrip the favored one in growing a 
great life. 

To understand this we must keep in mind that 
having money and position and learning and re- 
spectability do not necessarily mean being a great 
man. 

The element of chance plays a great part in 
what is loosely termed success; but in the attain- 
ment of real success there is no chance. All is 
law and certainty. 

What a deal of whining and self-pity it would 
save us if we could see that! 

Right now, if you care to begin, you can win 
the very best thing life has to offer, character, 
strength and beauty of soul. 

Self-mastery, loyalty to truth, obedience to con- 
science, the absolute trust in goodness, the utter 
giving up of one's self to follow one's noblest 
convictions, these things make character, and 
bring real success, not maybe, but just as certain 
as two and two make four. 

The only reason any mortal man does not be- 
lieve this is because he has never tried it. 

Most of us lead cheap, frayed lives of shame- 
ful compromise with our convictions. We have 
the lowest and most cowardly form of infidelity, 
to wit: that the Right will not always work. 

132 



We can't use goodness, but just a three per cent 
solution of goodness; not absolute honesty, but 
that nasty adulteration called commercial honesty; 
Jesus we think to be all well enough Sundays, but 
He didn't quite understand our modern week-day 
conditions. 

The trouble is, we are blinded by the apparent 
success of Getting On, becoming Rich, and get- 
ting Elected. All of which a man may get, and 
usually does, at the price of his real ruin. 

It's only when we brush away these touseled 
frauds, and get the right notion of what life means, 
that we perceive that the laws of life's success are 
pure and true and dependable, that nature has no 
favorites, that souls are in reality a pure democ- 
racy, and that there is no injustice after all in 
the heart of destiny. 

My conditions, my temperament, my family, 
my abilities, my weaknesses, all were given me 
as the elements out of which I am to form that su- 
preme thing, character. 

And one set of equipments is as good as an- 
other, always provided you are not aiming to Get 
On, but to become great, strong and contented. 

Let any man say to himself, "I can become 
noble-minded, large-hearted, helpful, efficient and 
happy. No man nor devil nor ancestors nor en- 
vironment can hinder me. And this I will do. I 
will not set my heart on the gambling matters of 
money, fame or place." And you can no more 
stop that soul from getting what he wants than 

133 



you can stop Halley's comet. He's in God Al- 
mighty's hand. 

Let him, on the contrary, guided by the "suc- 
cess" books that are now the fad, say, U I will be 
rich, famous and prominent." Ten to one he 
will fail. And if he succeeds, go talk to him, and 
you will probably find his heart bitter. 

Let us prate less of believing in God and act 
more as if we believed in God's laws. There are 
many who worship Jesus with a little superstitious 
corner of their mind, but with all the rest of their 
being go in precisely for that kind of life, aims 
and ideals Jesus condemned. 



134 



THE JOY OF WORK 

If you examine carefully all the supposed joys 
of life you will find that the most enduring, satis- 
factory and real joy is work. 

But, to be joyful, work must be the kind you 
like. 

And work, to be liked, must have two ele- 
ments. 

First, it must call into play one's full, normal 
activities. 

And, second, it must be the creating of some- 
thing. 

The truest happiness is found in the most com- 
plete exercise of our powers. 

Children are happy because they are doing with 
all their might all they can do. Arms, legs, lungs 
are busy every waking moment. 

Laziness, drunkenness, sensuality and overeat- 
ing are diseases that come on later in life. Those 
who indulge in them are happy only by fevered 
spells. Between these they are consumed with 
restlessness, doubt, ennui and despair. 

The great mass of men are happy most of the 
time because they have their necessary work. And 

135 



where a man finds his right work it is the same 
to him that play is to a child. 

Look at this busy humanity, doctors and law- 
yers, farmers, merchants, clerks, letter-carriers, 
engineers, masons, carpenters, writers and house- 
mothers ! Out of them, as a mighty chorus, arises 
the hymn of "The joy of living." 

Life is pleasant because it is functioning nor- 
mally. 

Life is a burden only when it ceases to func- 
tion. 

Every faculty cries for something to do. The 
brain must think, plan, organize, project, imagine, 
reason, compare, decide. 

When it has no real business upon which to use 
these motions, we load it with artificial concerns, 
such as novels, plays and travel-sights, to still its 
clamor and craving. But the people who are 
amusing their brains are not so happy as those 
who are using their brains. 

It is better to play at work than to work at play. 

The muscles demand something to do. When 
we refuse them, they breed poison in us. They 
curse us with gout and rheumatism and bilious- 
ness. 

The stomach, liver, intestines, heart and lungs 
all demand steady employment. Give us work, 
they shout, or we will go on a strike. They are 
more cantankerous than a labor union, when they 
are refused employment. 

136 



The eye wants work, and the ear and every 
gland, pore, nerve and tendon of our frame. 

And the soul wants work. We must have some 
one to love, some one to revere, something to 
suffer and to overcome. 

Tannhauser grew weary in the lap of Venus; 
he longed for human strife and sorrow. 

And a perfect hell would be a place where every 
sense is lulled, every appetite gorged, where there 
is eternal rest and nothing forever and ever to do. 

Joy is a function of activity. 

Soul and body pray for dangers, crises, tasks. 

Perfect joy encircles as a halo the brow of the 
worker and the fighter. 

"To him that overcometh will I give the morn- 
ing star." 



137 



THE UP-TO-DATE SINNER 

Modern civilization brings people into entirely 
new relations to each other. 

Every new relation of man to man involves the 
necessity of a new development of conscience. 
Humanity remains the same, but the adjustments 
of humanity change. 

To be good means something in 19 12 different 
from what it meant in 1620. And the sinner of 
these days goes about sinning with a different 
technique from that used by the sinner in the 
days of Miles Standish. 

The reason of this is, that sin is an abuse of 
personal relations. 

The Ten Commandments run right along, of 
course, through the centuries; but what any one of 
them means deepnds upon the development of 
society. 

Take "Thou shalt not steal !" for instance. 
Time was when that presented itself to men's 
minds as the taking by one man, with his own 
hands, of something that belonged to another 
man. It implied that the thief was a low-browed 
robber of hen-roosts, lived in the back alley, and 

138 



walked about with his back curved and a sneak- 
ing look. 

But the thief of this advanced time doesn't 
steal money; he organizes a corporation. He 
does not filch pennies from the orphan's bank; 
he bears the railway stock till the orphan's trus- 
tee has to let it go, and then gobbles it all. He 
doesn't water the milk; he waters stock. 

Sinning nowadays is done, in its neatest and 
most efficacious form, by wireless. Your genu- 
ine, up-to-date sinner is the long-distance sinner. 

Such a one is no Bill Sikes or Fagin. He is a 
model husband and father. He passes the hat in 
church. He presides at banquets. He makes 
speeches to school children upon the need of hon- 
esty, industry and neatness. 

Then he goes to the office, and through his 
modern long-distance-sinning business machine 
supports a lobby to corrupt the legislature, con- 
tributes to the jack-pot to elect the senator that 
will vote right on the tariff, refuses to better the 
condition of mines where lives may be lost any 
day, handles goods made in sweat-shops, collects 
income from rotten tenements — an income that 
reaches him disinfected by passing through four 
agents and two companies — charges Rvt cents for 
three-cent street-car service, and a dollar for sev- 
enty-cent gas; and though an old-fashioned mor- 
alist or a publicity-seeking muckraker might say 
that in reality he is robbing the poor, bludgeoning 
the helpless, poisoning children, destroying worn- 

139 



en's virtue and throttling men's hopes, yet when 
you meet him, sleek, bland and immaculate, a 
member of the best clubs, a leading citizen, a 
patron of charity balls, and a giver of libraries 
and dormitories and bells and pipe-organs and 
fountains to the people, why, you cannot believe 
he is a sinner at all. 

That is because sin these days is several miles 
ahead of conscience. 

He is a sinner. The bandit of Hounslow Heath 
was an apprentice compared to him. 

He is a sinner, and the very worst kind; for he 
is an admired and imitated and envied sinner. The 
old-time sinner was at least known and hated. 
This one is not known, and is praised. 

The primitive stage-robber fleeced his tens ; the 
modern sin-genius fleeces his ten thousands. The 
old time thug killed his man; the new, dress-suit, 
respectable, modern thug garrotes the whole 
people. 

It is a mistake to suppose the devil has horns 
and a tail any more. He has manicured morals 
and a winning way. 

The modern conscience needs jacking up. 



140 



PREJUDICE 

Prejudice is the gross, stupid, blind giant that 
bars the way of human progress. His only argu- 
ment is a club, his only speech an animal growl. 

Prejudice is the bog into which the mind falls 
and nevermore goes forward, but wallows, going 
nowhere, every struggle bringing upon itself more 
slime. 

Prejudice is a moral and mental kind of sleep- 
ing-sickness, a taint in the air that benumbs every 
faculty. 

The prejudiced mind is closed. Its door has 
shut with a click. The lock is sprung. The bolt 
is shot. No light, reason or truth is admitted. 
Only stubborn self-will and smirking egotism are 
shut in. 

Prejudice dries the heart; sucks it of all human 
kindness as one would suck an orange. One ceases 
to be a man. Passion may make a man a beast; 
prejudice makes him a devil. 

Prejudice is the huge dam thrown up by vanity 
and insanity across the stream of human sym- 
pathies ; the fresh water of love becomes the stag- 
nant back-water of fanaticism. 

Prejudice is the tyrant, the Nero of life, that 
141 



fiddles and sings while soul and body are ruined. 

Whatever dethrones reason is insanity. Prej- 
udice dethrones reason. Therefore prejudice is 
insanity. A perfectly good piece of logic. 

The prejudice of class-consciousness is insan- 
ity. The snobs are simply crazy; whether money 
snobs, social snobs, or culture snobs. Nothing but 
a trace of idiocy could lead one man to believe he 
is better than another merely because of his posi- 
tion. 

Sex prejudice means a weak mind. The dis- 
barring of either sex from any of the normal 
emoluments or privileges in life is only maintained 
by ancient and honorable imbecility. 

Race prejudice is based on ignorance. It is a 
hold-over from days when each tribe dwelt iso- 
lated from others and nursed feuds, hates and an- 
gers as the necessary spirit for continual warfare. 
To despise a person because he is a German, 
Frenchman, Japanese or Negro reveals a streak 
of infantile paralysis of the mind. Those who 
know other races know they have not only faults 
we have not but also excellences we cannot at- 
tain. 

Family prejudice is an inherited trait of primi- 
tive village mania. The place for feuds is in the 
insane asylums. To look down upon a man be- 
cause he is a Johnson or a McCann is to reveal 
one's intelligence as incapable of ordinary judg- 
ment. 

Theological prejudice is, thank God ! a thing of 
142 



the past. But what heaven-high crimes it has 
committed, what outrage upon humanity! It has 
tortured and slain bodies enough to pile high 
as the statehouse, and broken hearts enough and 
darkened souls enough to make the whole globe a 
hell, could all the victim spirits be brought back. 

Open the mind's door. Kick out expediency. 
Let in truth. 

You are hospitable with your table, be hospit- 
able in your thoughts. 

Bring reason up from the cellar, where you 
have confined him, and set him up as your proper 
lord and master. 

Let love have its way, to prove to you that it 
is the greatest thing in the world. 

Expel your pack of pet prejudices; hound dogs 
they are, and liable to go mad any minute and bite 
you and those you love. 

Cultivate what Matthew Arnold called u sweet 
reasonableness." 

"Men," cried Rousseau, "be human! It is your 
first duty!" 

It was not "sin" as we commonly use the word, 
but Prejudice that poisoned Socrates, crucified 
Jesus, burnt Savonarola, assassinated Lincoln, 
and has stood in the way of every spiritual ad- 
vance of mankind, every forward step of sci- 
ence, every improvement in education and govern- 
ment, and every wholesome growth of the human 
mind and heart. 



143 



IS MONEY THE MAIN THING? 

Money is not the real incentive. It seems so, 
but it is not. The real motive that gets men to 
work is the desire to serve. 

We won't acknowledge this. The Anglo-Saxon 
is temperamentally ashamed of any high-sounding 
claim. He blushes at his own good deeds and 
loudly disclaims unselfishness. Usually he believes 
he is telling the truth about himself. But he is 
mistaken. He is nobler than he suspects. 

Take the girl at the pie counter, the workman 
laying brick, the clerk in the bank, the railway 
conductor and the grocer. Ask them why they 
get up every morning and go to work, and they 
will answer promptly, "To make money. No 
sentiment goes with me. I want cash. I work 
because I need the wages." 

It is not very hard to prove that this is not 
true. Put one of these people at an entirely use- 
less business, where he gets something for noth- 
ing, and no matter what the gain he will by and 
by resign. This does not apply to rascals, get- 
rich-quick Wallingfords, and the hangers-on of 
useless institutions, but to plain, ordinary folks. 
Only a small fraction of the human race is para- 

144 



sitic, but the main portion of mankind would be 
unhappy if it got money any other way than by 
giving value received, or at least by thinking so. 

Down in their hearts the lunch-counter waitress, 
the brickmason, the conductor and the grocer be- 
lieve they are rendering a service to humanity. It 
is this feeling that renders them cheerful and self- 
respecting. 

The only class that is happy in work is the 
class that gives real service. You have noticed 
that letter-carriers, farmers and mechanics as a 
rule are cheerful. They whistle as they labor. 
The beggar, thief and sycophant do not whistle. 

The endowed class and the parasite class as a 
rule furnish the hypochondria, neurasthenia, mor- 
bidity, ennui, restlessness, crime and general mully- 
grubs for the world. Only a rare and superior 
soul can stand drawing a stipend just because he 
is somebody's son. Most of those who inherit 
independent wealth inherit world-weariness. 

A bright woman once said, "I suppose if I 
should have a million dollars the first thing I 
would do would be to get a cancer." 

Contentment is a by-product of service. 

Carlyle's preachment was sound: u In God's 
name, produce something! Find your work!" 

Would you be willing to stand, with your hat 
in your hand, at the church door and beg, even 
if you could make fifty dollars a day? Not as a 
steady employment. You hate to be a beggar. 
You want to earn what you get. Which means 

145 



simply that the reward of service, without the ser- 
vice rendered, is sickening to a healthy soul. 

This idea of service as the essential element of 
life is the most vital idea of the Twentieth Cen- 
tury. The King of Portugal failed to do his 
work and lost his job. The President of the 
United States knows he will have to make good. 
The Czar of Russia had to go. The Man- 
chus in China ceased to serve the people and fell 
upon grievous times. 

One has made a genuine discovery when he has 
grasped the fact that joy is a thing that is fast 
linked to service. Then he will cease indulging 
in idle, feverish dreams of millions and promi- 
nence. For the man who is not somehow serving 
humanity invariably gets a dark brown taste in 
his soul. 



146 



DISGRUNTLED HONESTY 

"There's no use being honest," said the man 
in the smoking car as he viciously bit off the end 
of his cigar, applied a match and blew out a puff 
of smoke as if he hated it. "It's the smooth rascal 
that gets there. If you want to get on in this world 
you've got to bluff. The fellows that do good 
work are not the ones that get the plums; it's the 
fellows that hand out the 'con.' Life's a confi- 
dence game. The bunko man is king." 

This is here written down as a sample of about 
the worst sort of infidelity. For the infidel that 
does the real harm is the man who loses belief in 
the value of being straight, clean, true, and kind. 

You may doubt the New Jerusalem and the 
bad place, you may be a skeptic about the Jonah 
story and refuse to have faith in Mrs. Eddy, Our 
Lady of Lourdes and the Thirty-nine Articles 
and possibly worry along and be a tolerably de- 
cent sort of a person; but if you fall into belief 
of the omnipotence of skull-duggery and bluster 
you are surely in a bad way. 

As far back as Solomon those who understood 
knew that the worst thing that can happen to a 
mean man, a cheat, thief or rogue, is to succeed. 

147 



The end of every hog is the slaughter house. 
Sooner or later the butcher gets him. 

When toadying, trickery, and lying get the 
prize away from you, that is not the time to be 
disgusted and say things. 

You don't understand. That is the time to 
laugh. Life would not be funny if virtue were 
always rewarded at once. To see the jackdaw 
with peacock feathers stuck in its tail, to see the 
peanut thinking he's a cocoanut, to see the frog 
swelling up till he thinks he is a cow — that is the 
comedy of existence. It is to laugh. 

There was a deal of philosophy in the man in 
the story who was attacked on the sidewalk by a 
drunken Irishman, who knocked him down and 
rolled him into the gutter, exclaiming: "There! 
Lay there, ye dom Swede!" The man arose 
laughing. As the Irishman passed on, wonder- 
ing and muttering, the man still laughed. Some- 
one who had seen the occurrence asked him what 
he was laughing about. 

"That's a good yoke on that feller," said the 
man. "He thought ay bane a Swede, and ay ban 
Norwegian!" 

To be sure the rascal does succeed, and too 
often. But success is not everything. A man has 
his life to live. He has to keep a face he is not 
ashamed to look at in the glass while he is shav- 
ing. He has to have a memory that will let him 
sleep. He has to keep a mouth fit to kiss his 
wife with. And, most of all, he has to keep eyes 

148 



that are not afraid to look into the eyes of his 
children. 

And still more, he wants to feel good while he 
is doing it. The half of honesty is lost if it 
doesn't make you happy. 

"Godliness with contentment is great gain," 
says the Bible. 

Disgruntled goodness is half rotten. 



149 



SUPERSTITION 

Of course you are not superstitious. No one 
will admit the general impeachment. But in most 
of us there lurk spooks in little dark corners of 
the mind. 

There is not a thing in the thirteen bugaboo, 
still have you not met intelligent people who would 
not care to sit with twelve others at the table ? 

Doesn't it give you the least bit of a qualm to 
look at the moon over your left shoulder? 

And can you help feeling a little depressed 
when the fortune-teller at the charity fair tells 
you that there is to be a death in the family, prob- 
ably within the year ? Pshaw ! you take no stock 
in such silly stuff — but — still 

There's the rub, "but — still!" Some of the 
taint is in our blood. 

Let us face the matter squarely. Let us go 
through our minds and pull up all those little 
weeds. They seem insignificant^ but they contami- 
nate the intelligence and taint the free affections. 

Defy, combat, and oust the last one of your 
superstitions, whatever they may be, whether like 
old Dr. Johnson, you are afraid to enter a room 
with your left foot first, or to pick up a pin with 

150 



its point (or its head, I forget which) toward you, 
or to begin a journey on Friday (and do you 
know that transatlantic liners do not dare sail 
on Friday?), or to spill salt without throwing 
a pinch over your shoulder, or to carry a spade 
through the house for fear some one will be dig- 
ging your grave, or to open an umbrella indoors, 
or to plant potatoes in the light of the moon, or 
any such idiocies. 

These things are more serious than you sup- 
pose. They are "survivals"; that is, remnants 
of inherited weakness. Any one of them is a 
small decayed spot on the apple of your soul, liable 
to spread. Cut them out. 

There's enough, goodness knows, in Nature 
and her accurate retributions, to be afraid of, 
without fearing things that have no ground in 
reason. 

Write it down in your memorandum book that 
whatever fear has no clear linking of cause and 
effect, cannot stand the light, and consists merely 
in vague dread, is unworthy of consideration by 
a thinking being. 

All fear is not bad. Nothing needs the appli- 
cation of reason so much as fear. One ought to 
fear to eat poison, or to catch cold, or to stand 
on the track when a locomotive is coming. Also 
it is written that u the fear of the Lord is the be- 
ginning of wisdom." Life is preserved by such 
healthful cowardice of things that may prove de- 
structive. 

151 



All great laws of nature have their rear guards 
of terror; the body-laws of nutrition, breathing 
and exercise; the mind-laws of study or of idle- 
ness; and the spirit-laws, such as the conse- 
quences of love and hate, loyalty and perversion; 
every one of these has its penalty, or call it se- 
quence, attached, and one who does not have a 
wholesome fear of it is a fool. 

But superstition is an inane contortion of fear, 
and is utterly demoralizing. If a man is afraid 
to overeat, it makes him healthy; but if he is 
afraid of ghosts it makes him imbecile. If he 
fears to lie, it makes him manly; but if he fears 
the "prophecy" of some charlatan it makes him 
childish. 

We talk about this being a free country, but a 
free country is not of much use to us so long as 
we are servile spirits. 

Make your personal Declaration of Independ- 
ence. 

Have a little Fourth of July all your own, and 
revolt against all cheap, tawdry, irrational fears. 



152 



PREMONITIONS 

Lend me some hard words! 

Of all the fool asinine, silly, childish, contempt- 
ible, dangerous, morbid, wicked and entirely 
abominable toadstools that grow in the soul's gar- 
den, the Premonition is the worst. 

The most joint-loosening, sinew-softening, mar- 
row-melting, courage-sapping of mental poisons, 
the head and front of all noxious manias, is the 
feeling that "something is going to happen. " 

The writer knows whereof he writes. For he 
inherited from the mother's side a predisposition 
to this weakness. Many a time when leaving the 
house he has felt come over him the certainty that 
he would never return. Often when coming home 
he has dreaded to open the door, being possessed 
of a peculiar conviction that he would find some 
member of the family a corpse. Boarding a train, 
the picture of that train being wrecked has taken 
swift seizure of his mind. 

For the comfort of those similarly affected he 
may say that never once has a premonition of his 
come true, and whenever any ill-luck did befall 
him the faithless apprehension had failed to ring 
the bell. 

153 



Without undue boasting, therefore, he can say 
now that he has entirely rid himself of this un- 
comfortable obsession. There are things he fears, 
but he is not afraid of nothing. 

Psychic research and mental telepathy and such 
things may be of some use (all things are pos- 
sible), but they certainly do no end of harm. 
We have all read of those strange instances where 
a mother is strangely depressed at 3 P.M. on Sat- 
urday and it turns out afterward that her son 
broke his leg at that same hour, and how a man 
has a horrible dream on July 7 only to discover 
later that his friend had an ear bitten off in a 
discussion in Wolfville, Arizona, on that date. 

Novels and dramas feed the poison fumes. 
The heroine is oppressed all morning with fore- 
bodings, and in the afternoon, sure enough, Lord 
Edward, who had sworn to be true to her, elopes 
with the French maid. In real life the premoni- 
tions are due to an overdose of buckwheat cakes 
for breakfast, and Lord Edward cuts his stick on 
a day when Lady Clara Vere de Vere is feeling 
particularly chirpy. 

If one will sponge all this dream business, all 
these vague, bilious forebodings from the mental 
slate, and determine forevermore not to be afraid 
unless there is some intelligent ground for it, he 
will be wiser, healthier and happier. 

The utter uselessness of premonitions is shown 
in this; that even if true they are of no value, for 
they never fortify us to meet calamity, but on the 

154 



contrary, weaken us and enfeeble us to succumb 
before it. 

If bad luck, accident or even death is coming, 
the best preparation for it is a stout heart and a 
brain undrugged by the nonsense of dread. 

u But how shall one get rid of an obstinate pre- 
monition ?" 

First try your reason, if any. 

If it cannot be reasoned away, then try diver- 
sion. Think of something else. Engage in some 
business or amusement that takes your mind away 
from the subject. 

If you have any religion, use it. For all decent 
religions are based upon the care of an intelligent 
Father of all. 

And if none of these things bring relief, go to 
your physician and get a pill. Probably, after all, 
the difficulty lies in the liver. 



*SS 



THE DEMOCRACY 
OF HIGHER THINGS 

Did you ever think what a God's blessing it is 
that only money and money stuffs can be monopo- 
lized? 

They can corner wheat, but not wisdom. They 
can control all the beef in the country, but not 
love, which runs free, and may be had by a poor 
rapscallion for a soft look where all the fat pack- 
ers in Christendom could not buy it. They may 
fence in their private parks and set burly watch- 
men with guns at their gates, but old Nature is 
too big and wide for 'em, and any craft may sail 
the ocean, any haunted foot escape to the moun- 
tains, and any eye, soul-weary, roam the sky of 
stars. Lord This and Banker That may boast 
each of a Gainsborough or a Millet, securely 
locked up in his town house, where none can see it 
but those who come properly recommended, 
but the greatest masterpieces of the world will 
not rest until they get to the free gaze of 
the commonalty, and any human being now 
may for a trifle go and see the Sistine Ma- 
donna at Dresden, Michel Angelo's figures on 
the tomb of the Medici in Florence, the 

i 5 6 



Venus de Milo in the Louvre at Paris, and Watts 
and Turner in the London galleries. They may 
collect first editions and indulge in rare bindings 
and hoard them for the delectation of the few, but 
the gods of literature are the gods of the many; 
Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, Moliere and Cer- 
vantes any child may have and welcome if he will 
but go to the free library, and, for a few pennies, 
he may own them. Time was when only kings 
and nobles knew and kept in their own counsel 
what the whole world was doing, but you can buy 
the secrets of empires nowadays and the news of 
everywhere from Ponkapog to Pesth daily for a 
copper cent. Even God, who was once walled in 
by the hierarchies of all nations, and heaven, to 
which admission was in time past reserved for the 
elect only, are now the property of any least son 
of man; for 

" 'Tis only heaven that is given away ; 
'Tis only God may be had for the asking." 

We make a monstrous hullabaloo about so- 
cialism; do we realize that all the higher riches 
of life are and have been a long time common 
property? Can anybody own an idea, for in- 
stance? An idea about life cannot be copyrighted, 
patented or branded; it will escape from any cor- 
ral and race away to join the common herd; it 
is never satisfied until it pours, like the hurrying 
river, into the ocean of humanity. 

157 



Carlyle was contemptuous of democracy, and 
there may be many yet who fear the unchecked 
people ; but mankind has never risen to greatness 
in any field except by democracy. There is no 
privilege, no exclusiveness, no upper crust, no in- 
ner circle, nor esoteric chosen ones, except in the 
cheap and tawdry affairs of life. 

Whatever the rare enlightened souls only can 
understand is a humbug; set it down. Whatever 
but one genius here and there can do is a trick, 
an unbalanced abnormality. There is no heredi- 
tary nobility in character. There are no kings 
in goodness. There are no chosen few in great- 
ness. Manliness, womanhood, and all that makes 
man or woman fine and true and strong and sweet 
and divine, are open to every comer; indeed, stand 
knocking at the door of every human creature. 

Have done, then, with your puling about having 
no chance, and with trying to break into this or 
that set. Take the open road, and feel what it is 
to be a man ! And, as you go, you may sing the 
song of Walt Whitman, the poet of democracy: 

"I utter my barbaric yawp over the roofs of 
the world." 



i 5 8 



THE ROAD TO CONTENTMENT 

How would you like to have a hundred people 
thinking about you, and their thought a pleasant 
glow? A hundred people who whenever your 
name is mentioned make some complimentary re- 
mark, and when you are attacked or sneered at 
defend you warmly? 

A hundred friends would seem to be worth 
more, in terms of downright satisfaction, than a 
hundred canes in your rack, a hundred plates in 
your dining-room, a hundred rare coins in your 
drawer, or a hundred of any other of those things 
we tend to accumulate. 

You can have these hundred allies within three 
months time. The method of creating them is 
quite simple. It is this: 

Whenever you hear any one's name mentioned 
make some flattering observation about him. 

Keep this up for three months. During this 
period never indulge in one criticism cf any per- 
son, dead or alive. Make it one quarter of a 
year of solid, unbroken blarney. And see what 
happens. 

You will discover strange welcomes in unsus- 
pected places. Men when introduced to you, as 

159 



they catch your name, will suddenly grow cordial. 
Women when you meet them will look at you with 
curious and warm interest. Strangers will cross 
over to you in the street car and say, "Excuse me, 
but is not this Mr. Brown? I've heard of you and 
just wanted to meet you. From all I've heard, 
you're one of our kind of folks." You will begin 
to taste the honey of popularity. 

Furthermore, you will find yourself elevated, in 
a way, above your fellows. In the course of his 
tirade even the pessimist will pause to make an 
exception of you. You will be treated with 
marked consideration at the town meeting. And, 
the first thing you know, you will begin yourself 
to suspect that you are somebody. Your self- 
respect will rise. With it will rise also your self- 
complacency. 

You will grow cheerful. This will affect your 
body. Your liver will be encouraged, your stom- 
ach will behave, and your nerves will disappear. 

This will in turn operate upon your mind. When 
an unpleasant idea comes to you a swarm of agree- 
able thoughts will surround and overwhelm it. 

You can sleep. Comfortable mental images 
will escort you every night into soothing uncon- 
sciousness. Engaging dreams will be the cine- 
matographic diversion of your slumber. And you 
will awake in the morning and actually be in a 
half-decent temper before breakfast. 

It will alter your theology, revise your creed, 
mellow your philosophy, and altogether so change 

160 



you for the better that your children won't recog- 
nize you and your wife will fear you are taking 
down with some mortal disease or that you are 
concealing some crime. 

And all so easy ! All to be accomplished by a 
brief three months' course of flattery. You will 
not have to lie. Something agreeable may be said 
even of the devil, of whom the kindly old lady 
remarked when others were slandering him that 
at least his persistency was commendable. 

And remember that every human being is sus- 
ceptible to flattery; and, as has been truly said, 
even the man who boasts that no one can flatter 
him is tickled when you tell him that the one 
thing you admire in him is that he cannot be flat- 
tered. 



161 



THE GOOD SPORT 

President Roosevelt told the cowboys at 
Cheyenne that he liked the western men because 
they are "good sports." 

Sport, like some other words, has spread into 
widely variant meanings. A sport may signify a 
profligate, drunkard and spendthrift, just as in 
base mouths the word love may stand for shame- 
ful things; but it also signifies that type of man 
who is most popular among Americans — a good 
loser. 

Only a good loser is a real man. 

The one thing English-blooded people like is 
a game of some sort. A game has two elements; 
skill, effort and struggle as one part, and chance 
as the other. 

We love not only to pit ourselves against our 
fellows, but also against destiny. Nothing satis- 
fies us so downrightly as a fight. 

So long as business contains the two elements 
above mentioned it is interesting. The bad fea- 
ture of big business, as it is now developing, is 
that all chance is being eliminated. When a man 
or a corporation "sits in" at the game with a 
hundred million dollars worth of chips it ceases 

162 



to be a game ; it is a certainty. When it becomes 
"heads I win tails you lose" the performance is 
rather dull. It is not a fight; it's a killing. 

But so long as men are mortal the chief con- 
cerns of life will always partake of the nature of 
a game. No trust system, no socialism, commun- 
ism nor nationalism will ever remove the healthy 
strife between individuals for the prizes of life, 
whether the struggle be cruel or humane, vicious 
or good-natured. 

The schoolboy will want to get to the head of 
his class, the white-goods salesman will want to 
take more orders than his competitor, the lover 
will always have rivals for the hand of his adored 
one, and Jones will desire, until the heavens be 
no more, to live in a finer house and ride in a 
silkier automobile than Robinson. 

And as a general rule the onlooker will cry, go 
in and win ! The youth's banner will always carry 
the banner with the device, "Excelsior!" 

But it will also continue always to be true that 
any one of us will fail about ten times to where 
he wins once. 

And it is in failure that the stuff we are made 
of is discovered. If we sulk and are sore, if we 
give "reasons" why we lose, if we decry the win- 
ner, we are small — just petty and mean. But if 
we have learned the art of bobbing up serenely, 
wishing the best man luck, bearing no malice, smil- 
ing and not pouting, then we shall show ourselves 
to be as good men as the victor, if not better men. 

163 



And here is a secret not generally known. You 
have heard how nothing succeeds like success. A 
truer truth is that nothing succeeds like failure. 
Everybody loves the successful; but everybody 
loves much more heartily the cheerful loser. 

Take an inventory of your acquaintances and 
mark those that are the most popular, those you 
yourself like best. They are not the capable, 
clever, lucky fellows, those that get on the most 
rapidly and draw the most pay, but they are those 
who when they fall get up and brush off the dust 
and go at it again as jolly as ever, those who are 
swindled and don't whine, unfortunate and keep 
sweet, and those who miss the prize but refuse to 
be grouchy. 

There is nothing one man can say of another 
that is such a compliment, and carries with it such 
appreciation of the whole gist of manliness, as 
the commendation Roosevelt gave the cowboy: 
u He is a good sport." 



164 



THE CHILD WITH NO GIFTS 

If, mother, your child has no gifts, you really 
ought to be very glad. 

As he grows up you are perhaps disappointed 
that he does not seem to take to the piano; he 
can never be a virtuoso on the violin, his teacher 
tells you, he is no marvel at figures like the Jones 
boy, he has not the Smith boy's amazing memory, 
he is not saving enough to give promise of ever 
becoming a master of finance, he is ungifted in 
public speaking; in fine, he is just a plain, ordinary 
boy. 

Stop and ask yourself what you most deeply 
wish for him. You would like him to be famous, 
doubtless, to get on, possibly to get elected. But 
would you not after all wish most that he should 
be happy, honest, good, and useful? Naturally. 

In other words, you would, in your heart, get 
for your child life itself, in its fulness and richness, 
rather than any of the adornments or appurte- 
nances of life. 

Then here is something for your comfort. 
Every gift that singles a boy out above his fellows 
is a threat to life. 

1 6 5 



Further, every opportunity or advantage over 
his fellows is a menace to life. 

It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom, 
we are told. The reason is simply that he is privi- 
leged. And the tendency to privilege of any kind 
is to corrode character. 

It is therefore hard for the gifted orator, vio- 
linist, beauty, or other abnormally endowed man 
or woman to enter the kingdom ; which, of course, 
means to live a full, rounded, joyous life. 

All the real greatness of any human being lies 
in that part of him which he possesses in common 
with the general mass of human beings. 

One may be a great actor, a great singer, even 
a great preacher, and still be a very small, 
wretched human being. 

Of course, it is possible for a gifted person, 
such as a famous diva, a wonderful orator, a noted 
writer, an inventive wizard, a financial genius, or 
a beautiful woman, to be a great human being; 
just as it is among the possibilities (for, it was 
said, all things are possible, with God) for the 
rich man to squeeze into the kingdom, and for the 
camel to get through the needle's eye; but the 
chances are against it. 

And the chances are decidedly in favor of the 
ungifted child (not the stupid nor defective, but 
the ordinary, evenly endowed child) , becoming 
the most successful man, in the true sense of the 
word, of all men. 

For the ungifted is likely to have the most com- 
166 



mon sense, which is much better in this work-a-day 
world than any kind of uncommon sense. 

He will be less liable to excess, which is the 
fool-killer's other name. 

He stands a better chance for becoming a good 
husband and father, also a valuable citizen. And 
it means something to make a woman and children 
and neighbors glad you are alive. 

He has a ten to one advantage in the race for 
happiness. 

Ethically he is the most promising. For sound 
morals and true religion are largely matters of 
balance. 

And the probability is that, whereas your fledg- 
ling geniuses if they get on will give you occasional 
thrills of pride, your ugly duckling, your ungifted 
offspring, will be the cheer of your days and the 
delight of your old age. 



167 



THE WORKING GIRL 

If I were looking for a wife (which I am not, 
since I have been married and done for these 
many years), I would rather marry my stenog- 
rapher (though I have none, as people who sell 
soap and dry goods have more money with which 
to hire stenographers than have the people who 
write for the papers) — I say, if I were wife-hunt- 
ing I would rather marry my stenographer, whom 
I doubtless could know pretty well, than to take 
my chances with a young lady ( or older lady, for 
that matter, and the older the lady the more the 
chances) artificially dressed and mannered in a 
winter ballroom, or artificially undressed and un- 
mannered at a summer resort, for of her I should 
probably know nothing at all, until too late. 

The entrance of women into the world's work 
is one of the most significant of modern social 
facts. 

Some think it is full of threat. They fear the 
loosening of the moralities. This fear, I am sure, 
is unfounded. 

It brings up the old question of what makes 
goodness, protection from without or strength 

168 



from within. And to this the true answer perhaps 
is that it takes a little of both. 

But what all should keep in mind is that while 
a human being may go wrong now and then, from 
weakness or perversion, the one thing that is ut- 
terly incorruptible is humanity. You cannot cor- 
rupt a whole people. The "common run" of folks 
always have been and always will be measurably 
decent and honest. 

Women as a rule will always be good women. 
Shop girls are quite as moral as young ladies at 
home. Perhaps more so, for in them virtue is not 
due to ignorance and inexperience, but is of 
tougher fibre, as is every excellence that is wrought 
by use and courage. 

But we need make no comparisons. For there 
is really no difference in classes of women. I have 
known a good many actresses and a good many 
preachers' wives; and one class is about as wom- 
anly as the other. 

Woman is eternally the same, that is to say, 
eternally different, of course, wherever you put 
her. If she is self-respecting, gentle and high- 
minded, sitting in satin parlors, sleeping in luxuri- 
ous bedrooms, and riding in six thousand dollar 
automobiles, she would be just as high-minded, 
gentle and self-respecting if she had to sit behind 
glove counters, ride in five-cent street cars, and 
sleep in hall bedrooms, where the smell of fish 
comes in from the corridors, creeps through the 
transom, and mingles with the fragrant smoke 

169 



that blows in at the window from a neighboring 
factory. 

Of course, girls entering business are exposed to 
temptation. Every change in established custom 
exposes one to temptation. It is dangerous for the 
country merchant to come to New York to buy 
goods. It is dangerous to send a boy to college. 
It is dangerous for the parson to go to Europe. 
It is dangerous to send the hired man to town to 
buy a new currycomb. The only safe thing to 
do is to die. 

But restriction is not character, neither is cus- 
tom. They are substitutes for character, and 
poor ones. 

Young people should be guarded, but only with 
the intent of enabling them to develop strength 
enough to need no guarding. Law is only valu- 
able as a training for freedom. 

The Salvation Army lassies poking about the 
slums are quite as pure and holy as were the clois- 
tered nuns of the middle ages. They come upon 
the vileness of men as sunlight falls upon mud; 
the mud is dried up and the sunlight is untainted. 

A good woman is antiseptic. 

I believe the working woman is making a new 
and better type of womanhood, the Pallas Athene 
woman of the future, fearless, clear-eyed and sane, 
and just as sweet as ever. 

To the end of time men and women will go 
on loving and mating, having children and build- 
ing homes for them. Under no possible circum- 

170 



stances is this race going to lapse into the sink of 
free love, any more than it will take to universal 
riot and murder, for the simple reason that free 
love is death to the finest, strongest and dearest 
idyll of humanity, which is — loyal love. 



171 



EVERYDAY MYSTERIES 

The irregular verbs in any language are the 
most commonly used verbs. For instance, in all 
tongues the verb "to be," employed oftener than 
any other, is distressingly variant. Witness our 
English forms, "am, was, been, be." 

And as with verbs, so it is with things them- 
selves. The strangest, most wonderful and most 
unexplainable things are those that are parts of 
everyday life, things to do with daily, hourly. 

Things remote are plain enough. Men know 
the movement of the stars so accurately that they 
can calculate eclipses to the minute and tell pre- 
cisely the time Halley's comet is due to emerge 
from the unseen depths of heaven. But most of 
us manage to get along without bothering our 
heads about eclipses or comets. 

But why does an acorn make an oak and a bulb 
make a hyacinth flower out of the same soil? 

Two plants side by side in the garden make, 
one a red and the other a blue flower; why? 

Why do things ferment? "The gap in our 
knowledge we feel most keenly," says Dr. Loeb, 
"is the fact that the chemical character of the 

172 



catalyzers (the enzymes or ferments) is still un- 
known." 

What is digestion and assimilation? How do 
beef and bread become finger nails and eyeballs 
and teeth? And how does air in the lungs purify 
the blood? 

Why are some vibrations of matter received 
perceived by the ear as sound, others by the eye 
as sight, and others by the nose as odor? 

And then there are these great utterly baffling 
puzzles, without which human existence would 
mean nothing: Love, Conscience, and Life. 

Of course, we know something of the habits and 
laws of these mysterious things, but of the reality 
of the things themselves not one whit. 

Men are no nearer a knowledge of the intimate, 
common mysteries of life now than they were in 
the stone age. 

We know a bit more how to use electricity, but 
no more of what electricity is. 

What is Life itself? We know no more than 
Adam knew. "All the new knowledge which the 
scientific laboratories have brought us," writes 
Peter Cook, "has simply shown us how insufficient 
and utterly untenable all our theories concerning 
life are. We know it is not a force in any ordi- 
nary sense of the term. It cannot be measured by 
footpounds, it is not an energy, exerts no pressure, 
cannot be converted into anything else, has no 
dimensions and no mass. It is not a chemical 
affinity, nor ever so tenuous an emanation of mat- 

173 



ter. It adds no new quality to any atom or mole- 
cule. It cannot change or oppose any chemical 
or physical law. Yet it guides both chemical and 
physical forces, exhibits sensation and conscious- 
ness, purpose, and will. It is a point blank con- 
tradiction and very nearly a philosophical impos- 
sibility in scientific systems. What is it?" 

Thirty years ago there was a cocksure propa- 
ganda of "science," and we were led to believe 
that all things that could not be "explained" would 
soon be brushed away as nonsense. 

In recent scientific writings it is a pleasure to 
note that the abiding mysteries of existence are 
being recognized. A deep reverence is again ob- 
servable in our foremost biologists and physicists. 

At the same time, Chesterton, the most brilliant 
figure in present day letters, takes for the keynote 
of his gospel the fact that it is from life's mys- 
teries and not life's certainties that man draws his 
greatness. In his "Ballad of the White Horse" 
he hits the matter off with his usual pungency : 

When all philosophies shall fail 

This word alone shall fit: 
That a sage feels too small for life 

And a fool too large for it. 



174 



THE LOVE OF PRAISE 

One of the keenest pleasures of existence is 
to be able to do something, to do it, and to get 
praised for it. 

Half of the fun of writing a book, said Frank 
Norris, is to read what people say about it. 

Say what you please about the love of praise, 
if there is anything that just tastes better to a man 
or woman I don't know what it is. Quite aside 
from the questions whether it be naughty, or sin- 
ful, or low, or selfish, or what not, concentrate 
your mind for a moment on this one point — that 
it tastes good. Oh, better than honey in the 
honeycomb, better than chocolate creams and 
champagne waters and other things that are not 
good for you, as good as tobacco, almost as good 
as kisses. 

It is very grand and heroic to do a noble deed 
and let no one find it out. But it's a deal more 
satisfactory to be caught and exposed. 

And what is it to love praise but a keen sense 
of appreciation of our fellow-men's opinions? 

So, if you love me tell me so. If you do not 
like me, please go away. It's a roomy world. 

175 



And even if we both go to heaven I doubt not 
there will be stars enough so that you can dwell 
among the Seven Sisters and I can wag along 
somewhere in the tail of the Big Dog. 

Not doing a thing, or doing a thing poorly and 
getting praised for it, does not taste good to a 
healthy man. For that reason one would imagine 
that kings and people with nothing but money 
would sour in their souls. To be eternally kow- 
towed to, and to be called your majesty, when you 
know perfectly well you are not majestic, that 
would make a man want to take to the woods. 
The most rational princesses would seem to be 
those that elope with coachmen just for the sake 
of being treated as a woman. 

But to do a thing, something worth while, to 
put through a business deal, to make a perfect 
instrument, to shoe a horse well, to bake an ideal 
batch of bread, to paint a picture, or chisel a 
statue, or compose or perform a piece of music, 
or to preach a sermon, or to act a part upon the 
stage, and to feel that in any one of these ways 
you have succeeded — there's a fine, healthful glow 
about that. And then when the applause comes, 
when bouquets are thrown, when your friend hur- 
rahs, and even when your enemy is forced to say 
it's not half bad, that is one of the sunlit peaks 
of bliss here below. 

Happiness has been defined as the perfect use 
of one's faculties, the free expression of one's per- 
sonality. But that is only one-half of happiness; 

176 



the other half is to have people appreciate what 
you do. 

The servant in the parable doubtless was sus- 
tained all along by the consciousness of industry 
and probity, but his joy was like a bulb in the 
earth, growing secretly; it never burst into bloom 
and fragrance until he heard his master say, 
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant! 
Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will 
make thee ruler over many things." 

Of course, the love of praise can be carried too 
far, but what good thing cannot? Some persons 
overfeed, but shall we then have no more cakes 
and ale? 

Love is good, but love returned raises it to the 
hundredth power. Kindness is good, but grati- 
tude blows its pleasurableness from a spark to a 
flame. 

They tell us that even God likes to be thanked. 



177 



THE WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS 

When King Solomon built his temple he so 
arranged it that the whole structure arose without 
the sound of a hammer. The Book of Kings says : 

"And the house when it was building was built 
by stone made ready before it was brought 
thither; so that there was neither hammer nor axe 
nor any tool of iron heard in the house while 
it was building." The same idea occurs in Jeho- 
vah's instruction to Moses concerning the altar of 
stones he was to erect when he had got over 
Jordan: 

u Thou shalt build the altar of the Lord thy 
God of whole stones; thou shalt not lift up any 
iron tool upon them." 

There is a very beautiful fancy in this. Man's 
supreme work is to be done without clash and con- 
fusion. 

And is not this true of the best work we do? 
We say we have had to struggle for what we have 
won in this world; but, after all, are the things 
we fought for the ones most worth while ? 

We wrestle and strain and strike and cry to 
obtain money; it means shoving and pushing to 
attain prominence; but, running over your circle 

i 7 8 



of acquaintances and noting those that have 
heaped up much plunder or have made their way 
to an envied position in the social world, do you 
find them markedly cheerful and content? They 
have built their success with the noise of the ham- 
mer, and their spiritual house is decidedly cold 
and draughty. 

In your own life you find that the best things 
in you have matured quietly and without friction. 
And what a wonderful thing it would be if we 
could live our lives smoothly from beginning to 
end? 

Impossible? Outwardly, yes; inwardly, no. 
And confusion and uproar are not so bad without 
if we can only keep them from getting within us. 

So I will give you a recipe Tor building your 
inner house without lifting up any iron tool 
upon it. 

It is this: It is not things that matter; it is all 
in the way you look at things. 

Nothing is intolerable except your attitude of 
mind. 

Ponder this long before you reject it. It may 
mean a reversal of all your notions of life. Jjt 
may even anger you to be told that after all there 
is no trouble but the trouble you make^l It is irri- 
tating to be told that it is all one's own fault. But 
think it over seriously. 

It is no new or cheap and frivolous recipe. For 
it is the basis of all the great religions. It is the 
underlying truth of Buddhism, of Mohammedan- 

179 



ism, of Christianity. It is the secret of the Catho- 
lic saints, the Protestant mystics, and the Christian 
Scientists. In fact, every reformation or new re- 
ligion but goes back and restates this primal truth. 

Happiness means harmony with your condi- 
tions; it means adjustment, t And one has made 
his greatest step toward permanent happiness 
when he has discovered that it is vastly easier to 
adjust himself to the universe than it is to adjust 
the universe to himself, j 

Bringing up children is usually a stormful un- 
dertaking. C It would save a deal of scolding and 
heart-hurt, worry, and conflict, if the mother 
would set herself to learn what her children are, 
study their dispositions and natural tendencies, 
and try to adapt herself to them, instead of cruci- 
fying herself endeavoring to get them to conform 
to her notions of what they ought to be«J 

Any task approached in the right way is easy. 
Any calamity, if it be mixed with nobleness and 
wisdom in the mind of him to whom it happens, 
is a spiritual opportunity. Even the cross was the 
redemption of the world. 

We cannot all be gifted, nor rich, nor promi- 
nent; we cannot all be preeminent, as every tree 
in the forest cannot be the tallest; but we can all 
be great, great-souled if we will, great in poise 
and heroism of mind. 

And the great soul is not tugging at things; he 
is tugging at himself, that he may learn the way 
of looking at things. 

180 



THE CLASSIC 

Perhaps the best definition of classic is that 
given by Lowell: "Something that can be simple 
without being vulgar, elevated without being dis- 
tant, that is neither ancient nor modern, always 
new and incapable of growing old." 

Let us examine this sentence. 

"Simple without being vulgar." It is simplicity 
that is the hall-mark of greatness. Only little 
souls or crazy souls are foggy and shrouded in 
mystery in their utterance. Long, hard words are 
the sign of mental strut. When any one knows 
a thing thoroughly he can make an old apple 
woman see it. Esoteric wisdom is nine-tenths 
humbug. When the greatest Teacher that ever 
lived came to this earth to explain the deepest of 
subjects, He talked so little children understood 
him. 

Long words, as Chesterton says, are not the 
hard words; it is the short ones that are hard. 
For instance "condemn" has a nice, soft sound, 
while "damn," which means precisely the same 
thing, is hard and jagged as a brickbat. 

The difficulty with being simple is that, unless 
one is great-souled, he is apt to be vulgar. For 

181 



most of us it is well to be complex. Then we will 
not be found out. 

"Elevated without being distant." That means 
so genuinely great we can afford to be familiar. 
This again is too hard for most of us. Small 
souls do well to keep at a distance. For this 
reason families have so much trouble; the mem- 
bers thereof are too close. 

"Neither ancient nor modern." Only that is 
great which is written for all time and for all men. 

"Always new and incapable of growing old." 
This is, perhaps, the essence of true classicism. 
Dickens has refused to die. Dante is not a fad; 
no fad can live six centuries. Time is the fatal 
test. 

And the secret of being permanent is being real. 
We should weary of the sun and stars if they were 
painted. 

Whatever you do that is the pure expression of 
your own personality, that flows from your own 
thought and feeling as a rose develops from the 
stem, is classic. 

If the most commonplace man in the world 
knew how to tell the truth about what he saw, felt, 
and heard, his utterance would be classic. 



182 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

You may talk about your blind beggar at the 
gate, your starving widow with nine small children 
and one at the breast, your shipwrecked sailor, 
your lovelorn lass, your heathen in his blindness 
who bows down to wood and stone, and all the 
rest of your suffering fellow men, but to my mind 
the one who most deserves our sympathy, our 
helping hand and amiable tear is the college 
president. 

It is when I observe a live, husky male of my 
species going about college presidenting that I am 
amazed at the powers of endurance in man, and 
at the amount of pressure one can stand without 
going stark mad. 

For the college president stands upon the tiptop 
peak of respectability. He is the breathing image 
of the proper thing. He is that most awful of 
human abnormalities, an Example. An example 
may be all well enough to follow, but fancy being 
one! 

Upon him has descended the spirit of all those 
males that wear women's clothes, such as abbots, 
bishops, and all ecclesiastics, judges upon the 
bench, and monarchs upon the throne, and the 

183 



worthy plasterer and harness maker in those hours 
of effulgence when they assume the title of noble 
grand patriarch or thrice exalted ruler of the 
lodge of the Order of Oriental Princes that meets 
Thursdays over the grocery and stays up as late 
as 10:30 o'clock. 

He is not expected to do anything. He is to 
not do things. Any evidence of individuality gets 
him into hot water. He is to sink himself into 
the glory of the grand old Kalamazoo University, 
as the mediaeval ascetic was swallowed up in divine 
grace, as the Buddhist fades into Nirvana, as "the 
dewdrop slips into the shining sea"— "Om mani 
padmi om!" His reputation is wholly a matter 
of being safe. The amount of caution he carries 
about is beyond belief. It is like carrying one's 
pockets stuffed with dynamite. If I were elected 
president of a college I should stipulate that, as 
part of my salary, I should get one complete din- 
ner set of Haviland china per week, also one axe ; 
by retiring to my chamber and applying the axe 
to the china once a week I might remain sane, but 
I don't know. 

A college president cannot lie, but, what is 
worse, he cannot tell the truth — that is, indiscrim- 
inately. Upon every syllable of his lips, upon 
every gesture of his hand rests the awful gaze of 
Young Persons, who may be started upon the 
Downward Path or may be boosted upward by the 
slightest wrinkle in the college presidential coun- 
tenance. Hence immobility is forced upon his 

184 



face, silence or platitudes gag his mouth, pro- 
priety binds his hands. Hence they rob banks. I 
have no proof that any have been caught robbing 
a bank; but it must follow as a psychological 
necessity they just have to rob banks. 

Rush up to a college president and ask if it is 
Tuesday, and ten to one he will not dare answer 
yes or no. He gets in the habit of weighing the 
moral influence of all his statements, and when 
one forms that habit he gets out of the way of 
telling the truth — recklessly. God Almighty can 
let it be Tuesday once a week, regardless of conse- 
quences, but the college president has to be careful. 

And then think of the receptions he has to at- 
tend. I have seen all the devices for torture in 
the collections at Nuremburg and Regensburg, but 
nothing the Holy Inquisition contrived can equal 
a reception. Whenever a social protuberance 
takes place, whether a new pastor arrives, or the 
governor comes to town, or some old woman with 
money imports a celebrity, our poor college presi- 
dent has to be sacrificed; he must don his dress 
suit; stand around first on one leg and then on the 
other for hours until his back is broken and his 
knee joints paralyzed, must freeze his insides with 
ice cream and lemonade, and must speak forth and 
listen to bromides unceasing, until he goes home 
to toss all night upon his bed in fear that possibly 
he may have said something. 

Thus he lives on, the pitiful victim of our mod- 
ern cruelty, until early in life he dies, and his 

185 



remains continue the performance and go for- 
ward, eating at thousands of indigestible banquets, 
accumulating capital letters behind the name, 
garnering endowments wherewith to perpetuate 
the system, until at last his body is put under a 
large stone in the cemetery and his face is exposed 
forever in the college chapel, just to show a gaping 
world what a man can suffer and yet exist. 



186 



DEATH 

There is something fascinating, blinding in the 
thought of death. 

We call the monks of old morbid who were ob- 
sessed by it, wrote u Remember Death I" upon 
their cell walls, and had skulls among their daily 
furniture; and, perhaps, they were morbid, and, 
perhaps, the idea of death is too strong a liquor 
for use in the morning; but, for all that, there is 
something in death that makes men great, unseals 
the wells of poetry, and smells of eternal youth. 

How was it that Wagner could find no fit climax 
for the mighty loves of Tristan and Isolde except 
in death? Why do the murders of Socrates, Joan 
of Arc, and Lincoln place these personalities 
among the constellations of our esteem? Why is 
there nothing so apotheosizing a man can do as 
to die? And why does the death of Jesus lift His 
life and teachings into such thunderous power and 
authority? 

Every least act of living we perform gets its 
pathos and beauty from the sea of death that flows 
around it. The kiss is sweetest that may be the 
last. The parting is made tender by the ever- 
lurking possibility that it may be forever! 

187 



"Unsuspected," writes Alexander Smith, "this 
idea of death lurks in the sweetest music; it has 
something to do with the pleasures with which we 
behold the vapors of morning; it comes between 
the passionate lips of lovers; it lives in the thrill 
of kisses." 

A ray of death makes the most commonplace 
thing shine. A photograph of the living is noth- 
ing, but of the dead how strangely interesting. An 
old shoe, a glove, a hat, if it belong to one of the 
silent forever, takes on new significance. 

An ordinary merry-making may be vulgar, even 
offensive, but becomes at once tragic and sublime 
when 

As if beckoned by an unseen hand 
The man whose laugh is loudest in his cups 
Rises with a wild face, and goes away 
From mirth into a shroud, without a word. 

All about life play the electric beams of death. 
All around the actual is the halo of the infinite 
mystery. 

It is folly to laugh at death or to defy it. /It is 
cowardly to evade it. It is sickly and mistaken 
to be depressed by it./ But to be ever subtly con- 
scious of it, and to draw from that consciousness 
a feeling of awe, of dignity, and of infinite beauty, 
that is wisdom. / 



188 



WOMEN'S HATS AND 
SOMETHING ON THEM 

A good many things have been said that should 
not have been said, and a good many things have 
not been said that should have been said, about 
women's hats. As a "thing in itself," to use a 
phrase of the philosophers, considered apart from 
the feminine creature beneath it, apart from its 
fellow millinery, apart from this season's styles, 
apart from everything, viewed alone, set up on a 
pedestal in the court house or on a fence post in 
the front yard, the female headgear would be 
indeed a spectacle. It would be no sin to fall 
down and worship it, for it is like nothing on 
earth, nor in the waters under the earth, nor in 
the heavens above the earth. A philosopher, 
coming back to life, having once abode in Greece, 
where they knew everything, and meeting the 
missus's newest hat lying on the bed where she 
always puts it when she comes home from an aft- 
ernoon's social adventure, would be stumped. He 
could, as he stood in the bedroom, possibly under- 
stand the gloves from their resemblance to the 
human hand, also the shoes, the galoches, the veil, 
and the parasol, but what the dickens that thing 

189 



might be, all twisted, warped, and skewed, with 
dabs of ribbon and knots of impossible flowers, 
that would be past him. He would probably con- 
clude that it was some sort of beehive or rat trap. 

But the hat is precisely the one object in Nature 
that is not to be considered apart. It is the chief 
symbol of conformity. The last place you think 
of independence is in hats. We revolted, fought, 
and died gloriously against the king and law of 
England, but none of us were ever brave enough 
to draw the sword in rebellion against the Hatter. 
To say "mad as a hatter" is a joke. The hatter 
is absolutely the most safe and conservative being 
that exists. The first thing one does when he 
goes crazy is to wear the wrong kind of hat, or 
none. Honestly, can you conceive of a madman 
wearing a nice, new derby? 

So we must think of women's hats, not as iso- 
lated affairs, to be perpetuated in bronze or mar- 
ble and preserved in museums. 

A painting by a great master, done for an altar, 
is out of place on the wall of your parlor. So a 
hat designed to be the last and topmost explosion 
of a certain female really ought never to be 
taken off. 

Off, it is a nightmare of art, a mixture of me- 
nagerie, aviary, hothouse, and ribbon counter; on, 
it is our darling's own sweet self, leaping to the 
verge of her personality, yet holding on with both 
hands to the style in vogue. 

A man, in his hatness, can only conform. Knox, 
190 



or Stetson, or somebody designs the peculiar flare 
of brim and convexity of crown we are to wear, 
and we go and buy it. If we should dare question 
its beauty and fitness the hatter would send for 
the police, knowing us to be at least anarchists, 
possibly "outpatients of Bedlam." But a woman 
not only conforms, she also expresses her indi- 
viduality. She is twice the man. 

Her hat is not only in style, but it is herself. 
Battened down as woman is by convention and 
propriety, the only chance she has to take a lunge 
into personality is to get a hat with a feather three 
feet long, or one shaped like a milk pail crusted 
with roses, or a clump of stiff ribbons sticking out 
like the hair of a native Fiji, or a misshapen thing 
that resembles a piece of chewing gum after 
taking. 

Let us have done, then, with sneers at angel 
face's task in personal roofing. Let us be thank- 
ful that her instinct for crime takes so harmless a 
form. 



191 



THE LOST POCKETBOOK 

The other day I lost a pocketbook containing 
$200. We all do extravagant things sometimes, 
such as buying an edition de luxe of the Letters of 
the Presidents, or the bound volumes of the Con- 
gressional Record, which we shall never read and 
we don't need any more than we need a collection 
of new locomotives in the backyard. I didn't need 
to lose my pocketbook; I couldn't afford to lose it; 
but I did lose it. It is a form of extravagance I 
had never before permitted myself. But a man 
will do anything — once. 

Now I mention this loss, not because it is extra- 
ordinary, for people are losing pocketbooks, 
money, reputations, and tempers every day of the 
world, but because of a curious psychological phe- 
nomenon in my own mind connected with this sub- 
stance departed from my inside coat pocket. 

All the time I had that money I was denying 
myself, saving it up from motives of economy. 
Think of all that wasted moral force ! Worse 
than throwing away the money is throwing away 
so much useless rectitude. 

There are so many extravagant and delightful 
follies I might have committed. I still might com- 

192 



mit them if I had my lost and gone two hundred. 
I do not refer to useful things. One never regrets 
not having purchased useful things. I mean star- 
tling things. 

Some time ago I was engaged in trying to 
scrape up a few hundred dollars by besieging my 
millionaire friends for a poor artist, but they were 
so busy giving their money to buy stained glass 
windows in chapels and endowing beds in canary 
bird hospitals that they could not turn aside to 
help a real human being. A hundred times since 
I lost my stuff I have, in my mind, just sent $200 
to the artist. Alas for me — also for him! 

Then there was a piece of expensive fur my girl 
wanted. She took me twice by the window and 
bade me look at it, and her eyes shone. It was 
marked $150. She didn't say she wanted it. She 
knew we couldn't afford it. Besides, she's always 
craved a diamond ring. Oh! and oh! if I only 
had that money of mine that some thief of the 
world is now spending on variegated alcohol! 

There's that new suit of clothes, too, that I 
couldn't afford while I had my two hundred. And 
I economized on cigars, too. And those books I 
wanted — a whole shelfful of the very most neces- 
sary books on earth; to think I denied myself all 
these things just to supply some son of a disrepu- 
table sea-cook with money to burn ! 

We didn't go to the opera because it was $5 a 
seat. If I had known then what I know now I 

193 



would have gone and invited all the members of 
the Forty Club. 

For the money one misses most is the superflu- 
ous money. The main reason why I should like 
to be a millionaire is that I might engage in a 
little cheerful folly. I can spend money sensibly 
on my salary. But spending money insensibly is 
a luxury. 

I suppose, if I got the pocketbook back, with 
the money in it, I should still economize. Such 
is the perversity of human nature. It is the money 
we have not, or the money we have lost, that we 
are generous and reckless with. If I were rich 
as Rockefeller I should do so and so. Only I 
wouldn't. That's the trouble. 

There ought to be some reliable oracle or for- 
tune teller who could give you dependable infor- 
mation as to the future. Then if you knew that 
you were going to see all your savings disappear 
soon in a bank failure you could take out the 
money and have the time of your life. But if you 
did that probably the bank wouldn't fail. So there 
you are! 



194 



GRANDMOTHER 

Hardly has a line fuller of sweet sadness ever 
been penned than Omar's "Where is the rose of 
yesterday?" or Villon's "Where are the snows of 
yesteryear?" 

There is something pathetic in anything that is 
past just because it is past. 

This peculiar fact I have also noticed — that I 
remember a past sorrow with a pleasanter feeling 
than that which I experience in recalling a past 

joy- 
When the recollection of that time I was be- 
trayed, that time I failed, or that time I was 
humiliated, comes to me I have the same sense 
of relief that I feel in waking from a bad dream 
and being glad it was all a dream. It is over, 
thanks be ! the past is over, and the present is 
free. 

"Je suis, elle n'est pas; elle est, je ne suis plus." 
(I am, it is not; it is, I am no more.) 
But there is a little thorn set in "the rose of 
yesterday." 

"Dear as remembered kisses after death," 
writes Tennyson. "Deep as first love and wild 

195 



with all regret, oh death in life, the days that are 



no more." 



And he says the same better in the line, "A sor- 
row's crown of sorrow is remembering happier 
things." 

There is a well-known expression in Dante to 
the same effect — "There is no greater sorrow 
than to be mindful of the happy time in misery." 
(Longfellow's translation.) 

Also Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy 
says: "Infelicissium genus est infortunii fuisse 
felicem" (to have been happy is the most unhappy 
kind of misfortune). (I am still of those, you 
notice, who think that a bit of foreign tongue 
spices a page.) 

There are many kinds of sorrow. Some kinds 
burn and destroy, some others chill and deaden, 
while still others work madness in us; but the 
sorrow that is set up in us by the memory of past 
happiness is like none of these, but is soft and 
gentle, and disposes to charity and nobleness of 
heart. 

Therefore life ought to grow sweeter as it 
grows riper, and old age, bearing so many gra- 
cious memories, ought to be as lovelier than life's 
prime as sunset is lovelier than noon. 

Of all the household grandmother ought to be 
the dearest. There are no red kisses on her lips, 
as upon Susanna's eighteen-year-old cherry ripe- 
ness, that our lips should seek them, but there are 

196 



remembered kisses there, very fragrant to the 
soul. 

There are no fierce passions in grandmother's 
heart, but there are the angels of dead passions, 
who walk among her thoughts as stately shadows 
pass through gardens of roses and rue. 

She is old, but she is not bitter. The little 
graves in her heart are covered with long June 
grass. The dead days of joy, each is marked with 
a cross. 

If it were not for grandmothers we should 
never know how perfect and beautiful this human 
life may be. 

You wonder why she is so serene an optimist. 
It is because her joy is sorrow that has ripened, 
and her faith is not a militant creed, but a matured 
instinct. 

She is so sure and wise because she knows that 
so very many things make no matter. 

That, perhaps, is why the little boy seems to 
love her, if not better, at least in a more intimate 
and understanding way than he loves his mother. 
Grandmother has come into that rare wisdom that 
sees and knows the child's heart. 

A happy child is a happy animal; a happy girl 
is a happy heart; a happy mother is a happy 
human; but a happy grandmother is best of all, 
for she is a happy spirit. 

I know where are those roses of yesterday. 
Grandmother has them. 



197 



LILY WORK UPON THE PILLARS 

When King Solomon built his temple he had 
set up in front of it two pillars, which he called 
Jachin and Boaz, meaning permanence and 
strength. 

The cunning artist, Hiram of Tyre, made the 
pillars, which must have been imposing, from the 
many illusions to them; and in the account in the 
Book of Kings it is said: 

"And upon the top of the pillars was lily work: 
so was the work of the pillars finished." 

Lily work upon the pillars! It is a haunting 
word. 

All through the history of architecture men 
seem to have felt that the pillars of strength 
should be capped by the capitals of beauty. 

The same law holds good in the realm of spirit- 
ual reality that holds good in the realm of mate- 
rial appearances. 

The law is that the end of strength is beauty, 
and the basis of beauty is strength. 

Virtue is pure strength; it is not usable in the 
temple of life until it becomes beautiful, that is, 
till it becomes love. 

Love is virtue — with lily work. 

Contrariwise, mere amiability, tenderness, a 
pleasing face and manner, with no strength of 

198 



character beneath, is nothing but lily work for 
its own sake; hence, cheap and unsatisfying. 

So also Goodness is the pillar, Joy the lily work. 
Joy without Goodness is moral tawdriness, and 
Goodness without Joy is moral crudeness. 

The Puritans were all for pillar; the Cavaliers 
were all for lily work. 

There has been a world-long conflict between 
the moralist seeking for strength and the artist 
seeking for beauty. 

The Jew and the Greek have been undying op- 
ponents throughout the history of thought. 

They should marry instead of quarreling. 

For they need each other as man and woman 
need each other. 

Manly strength is not perfect; nor is womanly 
beauty; it is the union of the two, the family, 
which is perfect. 

Cromwell and his Ironsides, smashing stained- 
glass windows, were pillars. 

Read George Eliot's "Romola." Romola's 
husband was all lily work. 

I will tell you when the millennium will come. 
It will be when the good shall be beautiful, and 
the beautiful shall be good. 

Then shall the future chronicler say: "At that 
time humanity solved its problem. Righteousness 
and peace kissed each other. For men had at last 
learned, in their lives as well as their houses, to 
crown all pillars with lily work, and put lily work 
upon the pillars." 

199 



A MAN'S FIRST DUTY 

"A man's first duty," said an eminent English 
scientist, "is to find a way of supporting himself, 
thereby relieving other people of the necessity of 
supporting him." 

That I consider a shrewd and excellent observa- 
tion. 

Whatever may be your nature, whether you feel 
yourself to be an artist, or experience within you 
the movings of poesy, it is well to learn to do 
something that will enable you to exist with self- 
respect by taking yourself off other people's backs. 

The one work to take up is some kind of work 
the world is willing to pay for. 

You may be created to do something wonderful 
or beautiful or wise, but primarily you are created 
to do something for men that will persuade them 
to feed and clothe you. 

First earn your salt, then come on with your 
message. 

In the olden days the Jews taught every child 
a trade. The youth might grow up to be a learned 
rabbi, but on a pinch he could mend chairs. 

Saint Paul was a tent-maker. He discharged 
200 



his debt to the race by making tents ; he threw in 
his gospel as boot. 

It is what you do to boot that brings you glory 
and honor, praise and power. But don't forget 
your main duty, which is to earn your wage. 

If you don't have to work for a living it is too 
bad. You may amount to something, but the 
chances are against you. 

A few endowed gentlemen and ladies have 
helped the world along a little, in the course of 
history, but not enough to matter. 

Most people look upon a condition where they 
would be freed from the struggle for bread and 
butter and house rent as a heaven devoutly to be 
wished. 

Hence we have erected holy orders and univer- 
sities and scholarships and endowments so that 
superior folk might devote all their energies to 
higher things. For the most part those segregated 
and sheltered classes have done nothing much but 
maintain old ideas long after they are dead, and 
should have been buried, or contribute to the 
already endless bric-a-brac of learned uselessness. 

Wage labor is work. What you do after you 
work is play. 

Your play is the best thing you do. All true 
art, philosophy, and religion is the soul's play. 
There's no wage for it, and there never can be. 

If you work all the time you become stupid, like 
the huge money getters. 

201 



If you play all the time, like the endowed folk, 
you become silly, probably also vicious. 

If therefore you would be normal, healthy, and 
happy, do something each day that mankind is 
willing to pay money for, put forth some effort 
reducible to the common denominator of human 
activity — money; do that first, then do something 
that cannot be paid for. 

Perhaps you can do both at the same time. 



202 



WHY WE ARGUE 

After arguing about and around with a man 
— and I adore arguing, particularly about theol- 
ogy and other subjects of which I know nothing — 
I have noticed that in the end we both fall back 
upon our instincts. 

We are like two dogs who, after a fight in 
which neither gets the better, retreat, each to his 
kennel, and sit growling and showing teeth. 

For I never remember having convinced any- 
body of anything in my life, and I am quite certain 
nobody has ever convinced me. 

In a hand to hand fight one man can kill the 
other, but in a combat of reasons a victory is 
entirely impossible, and never was gained once in 
all the long years of contention. 

Every once in a while I hear some one say 
"Baur utterly demolished that position, " or 
"Weiss's reasoning is irrefutable," or "The ideas 
of Dingbat have been shown by Thingumsniver 
to be wholly fallacious," or some such thing, im- 
plying that somebody argued somebody else into 
silence. 

It is to laugh. Be not deceived. You can knock 
a man unconscious with your fist, but not with 

203 



your tongue. Argumentatively speaking, a man, 
and especially a woman, will go right on talking 
after death. 

No. What you do in discussion is to stir your 
mind, and your adversary's, and thus find out what 
is in it. As you contend, seeking for weapons to 
lay him low, you simply uncover your own sleeping 
notions, awaken your own latent heats, and arouse 
your own dormant prejudices. You do nothing to 
him; he does nothing to you; you both exercise 
and realize yourselves. 

No great controversial question in history has 
ever been settled by argument. 

Questions have been settled, to be sure, but 
sometimes by a big Fact coming along and crush- 
ing one party (as in the contention as to whether 
the sun or the earth moved around the other), 
or usually by the world's simply losing interest in 
the whole issue (as in the debates between the 
unitarians and the trinitarians, and in other theo- 
logical wars, which once stirred the blood, but now 
are as last year's roses pressed in an old book). 

Humanity settles questions and forms its per- 
manent opinions by the growth of its instincts. It 
lives questions down. It lives new interests up. 

The eventual creed of the race is forming just 
as a man's teeth, stature and habits form; by de- 
velopment, through experience. 

And the final belief, views, and tastes of the 
individual are simply the silt left upon his soul' 
by the passing over of his life series of thoughts, 

204 



deeds and enthusiasms. In other words we grow 
our creeds as we grow our bones, by processes of 
digestion and assimilation which take place wholly 
underneath our consciousness. 

Meantime, let the discussion go on. Let us 
wrangle over materialism and idealism, socialism, 
pragmatism, and agnosticism, for so we develop 
muscle. 

And down with the Anythingarians, who won't 
fight; for they won't grow! 

Huxley made a good guess: "What we call 
rational grounds for our beliefs are often ex- 
tremely irrational attempts to justify our in- 
stincts." 



20J 



SOME PLEASING FICTION 

Excuse me for a moment while I indulge in 
a little pleasing fiction. 

I have been telling the truth so long that I am 
weary, and would fain lie a little. 

There was once a young man who got married 
on a salary of $1,500 a year. The young couple 
lived in a small apartment, had simple amuse- 
ments, wore inexpensive clothes, and were happy. 
The wife did her own work, and the husband used 
to stop on his way home and buy pork chops. He 
smoked 5-cent cigars occasionally and a pipe gen- 
erally. 

He got on. Within ten years his income in- 
creased to $15,000 annually. They never moved 
out of the cheap apartment. The woman con- 
tinued to wear the same quality of clothes. Their 
expenses were increased only by the necessary ad- 
ditional outlay for three babies. The man con- 
tinued to smoke 5-cent cigars and a briar pipe. 
The extra money they saved. 

Ha, ha, and also ha, ha, ha. 

There was once upon a time a young preacher 
who travelled the Shakerag Circuit and got $700 
a year and a few preserves and pumpkins. He 

206 



was called to the Main Street Church of a large 
city. His family maintained precisely the same 
grade of living expenses they had on the circuit. 
He received $5,000 a year and put $4,300 of it 
away in the bank. 

There was once an actor who started in his 
career at $40 a week "and railroads." He lived 
on it and bought his clothes. He arose in his pro- 
fession, as he had some ability and was fair to see. 
He became a matinee idol. His salary was $1,000 
a week. He never hired a man to brush his 
clothes and pack his suit case. He never gave 
little suppers at $100 a sitting. He still took only 
an occasional glass of beer, or a hot whiskey when 
he had a cold, and never bought champagne. He 
put away for a rainy day $960 a week. 

Loud and continued applause. 

There was once a country lawyer who existed 
quite comfortably with his little family in a pleas- 
ant neighborhood. He rode out on Sunday after- 
noons with his folks in the surrey behind an honest, 
but not high-stepping, bay mare. Sunday morn- 
ings he went to church. Of evenings he would 
sometimes read Gibbon's "Rome" with his wife 
or play auction bridge with his neighbors. He 
was elected governor. He refused to give an in- 
auguration ball. He had no gold-spattered staff 
of cheap politicans who called themselves colonels. 
He lived along about as he always had. His head 
did not swell. He stole no money, but saved some. 
He just attended to the governing business as he 

207 



might have attended to any other business he had 
been hired to perform. 

One moment! There was once a college boy 
who sent back part of his allowance, writing to 
his father that he did not need it. 

To wind up this fiction with a comparable fact 
we must go back to the dark ages ; for there was 
once an emperor who laid aside his crown and 
took to raising cabbages. 

That, however, was a long while ago. 



208 



THE GOSPEL OF PSYCHOLOGY 

We love nothing with such passionate pain as 
a bad habit. 

It is a pleasure, of course, or we would not 
keep it up ; but it is a torment. 

To what good thing do we cling with that crazy 
desire we feel toward the wrong thing? 

What is that lickerish, fire-sweet, hateful yet 
precious quality that inheres in things reprehen- 
sible? 

A man once asked a woman, "How do you 
want me to love you?" She answered, "Like a 
bad habit." And that was demanding a great 
deal. 

The bad habit is the eczema of the soul. You 
feel an irresistible desire to indulge in it, and when 
you indulge in it you get nothing but pain, just as 
the eczema on your wrist intolerably demands 
scratching, which only makes it worse. 

In dealing with a bad habit the essential thing 
is to remember the only psychological law by 
which such things are curable, to wit: 

That the desires can be changed by the will 
operating through the habit. 

209 



This is the most valuable truth that any human 
soul can believe. 

By working in accordance with it we are saved; 
by denying or ignoring it we are lost. 

It is this law that makes it possible to acquire 
culture. 

By it one can change his inward cravings and 
bring himself to any desired condition of charac- 
ter. Without this law life would be hopeless ; the 
individual would never progress; there would be 
no possible improvement, only increasing degrada- 
tion. 

In a bad habit the thing we want to eradicate is 
the desire that pushes us toward it. If it is drink, 
we want to get rid of the thirst; if it is the eating 
of sweetmeats, we want to get rid of the hunger. 

The only way to proceed is first to set the will 
to watch, and whenever the craving comes on 
simply not yield. 

This may mean struggle, wretchedness, fever- 
ish misery and perhaps disqualification for our 
work. 

But we absolutely must persist. It is our only 
hope. And we can comfort ourselves with the 
knowledge that our nature inevitably yields to our 
will in the end. 

It is not going to be an endless, life-long com- 
bat; by and by nature gives in and a new set of 
desires arises in us which are in accord with the 
will. 

This is utterly true gospel. You may risk 
210 



your soul on it. Continue to not do a thing and 
in time the desire to do it vanishes. 

The only hope for self-improvement — in fact, 
the only hope for a life of decency, to say noth- 
ing of force and of refinement — lies in keeping the 
will in the driver's seat, the reins of the desires 
well in hand. 

For there is another law in human nature which 
is the converse of the law above stated. It is: 
That if one allows himself to be controlled by 
desire — that is, does only what he feels like doing 
— the desires steadily grow coarser, the animal 
swallows up the spirit, and, in plain English, one 
rapidly goes to the dogs. 

This law also is as true and hard as gunmetal. 

Are you will-ruled or desire-ruled? Answer 
that question of questions to yourself and you 
will know not only whether you are a good or a 
bad person (for that's about all the difference), 
but whether also you are a strong or a weak per- 
son, a force or a lump, a growing or a rotting 
organism. 

But what if the will is gone, destroyed? An- 
swer : That is a mere figure of speech. No man's 
will was ever destroyed. He always has a piece 
left. Even a pig can refuse to eat. The one thing 
we can always do is to not do it. 



211 



THE STUFFED CLUB OF IGNORANCE 

"Well, there may be something in it." 

With that spiritual instrument how many have 
been pushed into folly and into fear, and how 
many charlatans since the world began have pros- 
pered! 

There are so many things that cannot be dis- 
proved much more than there are things that can- 
not be proved. 

There is phrenology, the bump on your head 
indicating the bumps on your soul; and palmistry, 
the days of your life being indicated by the ex- 
tent of a certain crease in the skin of your hand; 
and pedomancy, the wrinkles on your foot being 
the railway map of your career; and astrology, 
whereby the stars are supposed to reveal your 
destiny; and table rapping, and innumerable 
petty superstitions, such as walking under a ladder, 
seeing the new moon over your left shoulder, 
stepping on the cracks of the sidewalk, opening an 
umbrella in the house, spilling salt and knocking 
on wood. 

There may be something in it, to be sure. And 
because we cannot disprove a thing it is proved 

212 



we are under some obligation to consider it 
proved! 

This crazy reasoning influences more persons 
than you would suppose. If your friends would 
confess you would find very few who are not af- 
fected a bit by this form of insane perversion of 
logic. 

Old Dr. Johnson would go back and start again 
if he left the house with his left foot making the 
first step. Many a judge or learned professor is 
shy of number thirteen. Atlantic liners will not 
leave port on a Friday; so widespread is the 
Friday bugaboo that few would begin a journey 
that day. 

When we get to the bottom of this state of 
mind it is seen to resemble the old piece of fool's 
logic which ran on this wise : 

"I can prove to you that it is raining now in 
this room." 

"How so?" 

''Well, it is either raining or it is not raining, 
isn't it?" 

"Certainly." 

"Very well. It is not raining, is it?" 

"It is not." 

"Then it must be raining!" 

It is curious to note how the human race has 
been led by the nose by sheer nonsense since 
history began. In ancient times generals planned 
campaigns and emperors decided matters of state 
according to the appearance of the entrails of 

213 



fresh killed bulls or goats or the flight of birds 
or the sneezing of some spectator. 

Why? Simply because some rascal with a 
mighty nerve asserted that these things were sig- 
nificant, and nobody could disprove their state- 
ment. 

Ponderous systems of credulity have grown up 
on sounder basis than this. 

This crazy logic has bent kings, swayed savants, 
filled countless libraries with trash, depressed hon- 
est men, worried good women, frightened chil- 
dren. 

It is the stuffed club of ignorance. By it timid 
humanity has been herded like sheep. 

The world owes an unpayable debt to the 
spirit of modern science. 

The sum and substance of the truth of modern 
science is this: That if a thing cannot be dis- 
proved or proved it is of no consequence. Why 
bother about it? 

Stick to the actualities. Fear not the vapors. 

But don't forget that there are also spiritual, 
psychological verities. Love and faith are as 
provable, usable and solid as brickbats. 



214 



THE APPRECIATORS 

You can take one of the two attitudes toward 
life. You can be a Critic or an Appreciator. 

Perhaps it makes no difference, but every man' 
to his taste, and I get more satisfaction from 
trying to understand things and people than from 
trying to tell what is the matter with them. 

For there is something the matter with every- 
body and everything. Nothing suits me, when it 
comes to that. I could suggest improvements 
upon creation, as well as Alphonso the Wise, who 
remarked that "it seemed a crank machine, and it 
was a pity the Creator had not taken advice.' , 

But what of it? There is also something useful 
in everything. 

Every man you meet has a present for you. 

Every little child has for you a spiritual flower, 
if you only have sense enough to see and take it. 

Every woman that the infinite Disposer of 
events leads to your acquaintance has a message 
from heaven. Let not the devil spoil it. 

The paving stones cry out: "We have our 
secret. We are trodden upon. But we are rank 
upon rank as well as are the angel choirs, and 
we sing our hymn also." 

215 



The bees buzz for you. The frogs pipe for 
you. The brook gurgles for you. The boughs 
nod to you. The houses look at you meaningful 
with their window eyes. The dog talks to you 
tail-language. The squirrels are not running away 
from you; they are trying to tell you something. 
And the sun shines for no other purpose than 
to cheer you up a bit. 

How do I know? How do you know that the 
sun wants to scorch you, and the squirrel to dodge 
you, and the dog to bite you, and the houses to 
imprison you, and the boughs to knock off your 
hat, and the brook to drown you, and the frogs 
to make fun of you, and the bees to sting you? 

It isn't a matter of fact. It's a matter of 
habit. 

Come with me, and let us appreciate men and 
angels. 

When you read a book strive to get the author's 
point of view. So much the better if it is not 
yours. Leave to the critics the superior busi- 
ness of picking flaws. They are paid for it. But 
it is no kind of business to do for fun. 

When you see a picture, even a futurist mess, 
get if you can what was the artist's intent. 

When you meet a woman find something in her 
to admire, if only her charming plainness. 

Set it down that in every man you encounter 
there is some striking, original element. Find it. 
You may not be able. But the exercise is good 
for you. 

216 



Life is good: also bad. Why bother about the 
bad? 

To-day is good. It is perfectly wonderful in 
its opportunities, gifts, delights. Think how you 
would miss it if it had not come. 

Your wife is an admirable woman. Oh, of 
course — but then — of all fools the biggest is the 
married person who has developed the habit of 
criticism — it is so uncomfortable. 

You remember what Stevenson said when he 
heard that Matthew Arnold, the critic, had died : 
"It's too bad. I'm afraid the Deity may not 
suit him." 

Dear old Herbert Spencer naively said: "No 
one will deny that I am much given to criticism. 
Along with exposition of my own views there has 
always gone a pointing out of defects in the views 
of others. And this," he added, "has led to more 
or less disagreeableness in social intercourse, and 
has partially debarred me from the pleasures of 
admiration by making me too much awake to mis- 
takes and shortcomings." 



217 



MISPLACED MEN 

At the restaurant where I had my dinner last 
night was a waiter who ought to have been a 
bishop. He had precisely that heavy air indicat- 
ing that a huge weight of thought was oppressing 
him, that slow movement of the head and ponder- 
ous uplifting of the eyelid, that significant reticence 
and measured speech, that bespeak position. Of 
course he was merely stupid and his thyroid gland 
probably failed to operate sufficiently; still he 
ought to have been, if not a bishop, at least a 
judge. Excepting the brains he had every quali- 
fication for an office of great responsibility. 

How often we find the Misplaced Man! 

I have known one, prominent in church circles 
in Evansville, Ind., who belonged in the cafes of 
Paris, and have seen a racing tout at Nice who 
had just the right temperment for a Christian 
Endeavorer in Omaha. 

I have now in my mind's eye a little woman who 
is perfectly wretched, simply because she, by some 
shake of the dice-box of fate, fell into the wrong 
place. She is just a light, life-loving, direct and 
uncomplicated nature; and she was born into a 
family, God knows by what quirk in the law of 

218 



heredity, where all but she are self-tormenting, 
abnormally conscientious Puritans. To make the 
matter worse she married the wrong man (mainly 
to get away from home, I've always thought), 
and he has turned her hair gray. Nobody seems 
to blame. The poor thing's life seems to have 
been a misfit, that is all. 

I have seen ministers of the gospel who by 
natural composition should have been circus 
clowns; they had that incurable itch for saying 
and doing things to make people laugh. 

I have known vaudeville actors whose every 
instinct was propriety and who had an uncon- 
querable desire to moralize, and hence should 
have been in the pulpit. 

I knew an old commercial traveller who had 
been u on the road" for over thirty years, living 
in dusty hotels, travelling in jerky trains, and tak- 
ing lonely cross-country rides in buggies and sleds ; 
and the one thing that man wanted more than any- 
thing else was a home, to putter about the house, 
to tinker with the clock and mend the chairs and 
raise radishes. 

How many a tragedy is due to one's simply 
being out of place ! The slang phrase shrewdly 
expresses it: he is "in wrong." 

What are you going to do when two perfectly 
nice people get married who have no mortal busi- 
ness to live together? There are two sides to 
the divorce question; and perhaps the offside has 
also some of the will of God in it. 

219 



But then you can have the wrong kind of child 
as well as marry the wrong spouse. I have seen 
little poets born into a family of horsey folk, 
and little natural-born cow-punchers enter the 
family of refined and finicky folk, and staid girls 
come to hoyden mothers, and light-hearted, irre- 
sponsible boys bestowed upon most serious fathers. 

Nothing much is to be done, except to get 
into the place you belong, if you can; and if you 
cannot, then make the best of it. 

Nobody is exactly where he belongs, unless it 
be the dead man in his grave. 

And character is formed and peace is found, 
not by escaping, but by adjusting. 

Still, I feel sorry for the poor waifs of tem- 
perament, those whose every day creaks on its 
hinges, those between whose nature and environ- 
ment there seems to be hopeless, endless war. 



220 



AT NIGHT 

When all the world's asleep I sometimes take 
my stick and walk out to see what old Nature is 
doing while she is not being watched. 

Yes, it is going on three, the eternal mill of 
things, the ceaseless workshop in which there is 
no eight-hour law. Gravitation does not sleep, 
nor heat, nor light, nor electricity, nor lives, nor 
the wheeling heavens, nor God. 

The young moon is holding high her torch. 
Ships of clouds sail by bearing cargoes of shad- 
ows. All the streets of heaven are lit. Orion's 
buttons are glistening bright. 

Around me the breezes are moving, whispering 
some hint to the trees, which nod knowingly. I 
wonder what it is all about. I am an outsider. 
I do not know what is going on in the conspiracy 
of things. 

Yonder is the church tower, bold against the 
sky. The chimes play a little tune, ushering in 
the hour-strokes, which speak in a deeper voice — 
one, two, three. 

I wonder how many hear that voice? Per- 
haps in one of the houses around me is a fevered 
one, counting, thinking how many ages have 

221 



elapsed since he heard it strike two, thinking how 
many more eons and centuries there are to come 
before morning light. 

The bell in the tower is the rendezvous of 
souls. 

How different the city street looks by moon- 
light! The shadows are thicker, their edges 
keener. The paving stones are whiter. 

There are many things I cannot see that by 
daylight I could see. But also some things come 
out clearer now. I never noticed the line of 
that roof before, not the contour of that tree. 
That statue at the corner also has a new pose 
apparently. 

Even so there are things surging up in me that 
I knew not in the press of the day's affairs. There 
is a sensation of smallness. I am so little, face 
to face with the sombre silence of the houses, the 
mightiness of the great town around me, the still 
majesty of the sky above. My soul feels like a 
raindrop must feel falling into the ocean. 

There is a sense of my extraneousness, my 
outsideness to everything. Nescience oppresses 
me, just as in the daytime science oppresses me. 
How vast is that universe which I do not know 
at all! 

I am a stranger. I do not know what the cos- 
mos is all about. What is this huge machine 
wherein I walk, not knowing why I am here nor 
where nor when I am going away? 

A sense of the infinite purposes of the universe 

222 



invades me. It is all a part of some gigantic 
plan. The swaying leaves of that tree, the loud 
laugh of those night revellers I hear in the dis- 
tance, the weaving stars, the thin moonshine, I 
myself — we are all wheels, cogs, pinions and 
shafts of the overpowering machine, each of us 
going his appointed way for some reason, but 
what? 

I am confronting the everlasting riddle — Na- 
ture. I am before the stone-lipped sphynx — 
Nature. 

I can only wonder at night. Daytime I think 
I can know a few things. 

But at night I can only wonder. Perhaps that, 
too, is Nature's intention. 

For from wonder it is only a step to worship. 



223 



THE FIVE LAMPS OF FAILURE 

In the parable of the five foolish virgins, when 
the bridegroom came, they found themselves with 
no oil in their lamps. 

They stand for all those whom the crisis finds 
unprepared. 

I will explicate to you what are these five empty 
lamps, if you don't mind a bit of preachment. 

Lamp one is religion without morality. Max 
Mueller says that the Hindus are the most re- 
ligious and the most immoral of peoples. And 
there is no doubt of the sad fact that religious 
emotion can glow in a heart as a fellow flame to 
immoralities. The greatest enemies to religion 
are those who profess piety but fail to show recti- 
tude. Theirs is the lamp with no oil. "Why 
call ye me Lord, Lord," said the Master, "and 
do not the things I say?" 

Lamp two is sentiment without habit. Life is 
made up of sentiments. Life, after all, is the 
way you feel about it. It is essential, then, that 
we acquire a set of dependable and permanent 
feelings. The only way deeply to root desired 
emotions in the soul it to practise them regularly. 
"The habit of doing that which you do not care 

224 



about when you would much rather be doing 
something else," said Huxley, "is invaluable." 
It is only they who do thus who have oil in their 
love's lamp. They whose rule is to do as they 
please are the foolish virgins, whose lamp of joy 
early burns to a smoky wick. 

Lamp three is training without training the will. 
Of all our parts that which needs most and gets 
least education is the will. Happiness is the 
product of strength. A strong body is good and 
so are a strong mind and strong emotions, but 
none of them is so good as a strong will. The 
will is the human mainspring and ought to be 
of tempered steel. A soft will that gives way 
to the push of any desire is the cause of most 
human wreckage. And a vacillating, hesitant will 
that cannot move firmly toward a chosen end is 
the cause of most failures. 

Lamp four is goodness without cheerfulness. 
It is doubtless your duty to do right, but it is no 
less your duty to be as pleasant about it as you 
can. Goodness may be a very splendid lamp, 
of bronze or of gold, like the lamps of the 
temple, or of cunningly wrought iron, hard as 
the lamps upon the wall of the Strozzi palace at 
Florence, but without cheerfulness it is but a 
dead lamp and sends out no guiding ray to other 
souls. Be good for your own sake and be cheer- 
ful for your wife's sake. 

Lamp five is love without loyalty. To say 
that loyalty is the oil in love's lamp is a very 

225 



accurate figure of speech, for, as a matter of fact, 
the enduring brightness of love is wholly drawn 
from loyalty. Why do a man and a woman at 
the altar swear they will love each other till death 
do them part? Simply because, other things be- 
ing normal, a man and a woman cannot live to- 
gether in the intimacies of marriage, remaining 
loyal, and not grow more and more into mutual 
love. The free lovers, who look on marriage as 
a bondage, as an unpsychological attempt to con- 
fine to one channel an emotion that should be 
free, do not understand the human heart. With 
the oil of fixed loyalty in the heart the flame of 
true love will not cease to burn. Without that 
oil love ceases to be lambent and clear and is 
but an occasional dull coal when the match of 
opportunity is touched to it, and consumes not 
the soul's oil of life but the soul's very substance, 
the light of whose burning is no light and whose 
only product is a most ill-smelling vapor. 

Happy are those five wise virgins whose re- 
ligion is the crown of a just life, whose emotions 
flow in deep canals to irrigate their desert days, 
whose education begins with the culture of the 
will, whose piety is amiable to us poor sinners 
and whose love is fed from deep wells of loyalty, 
for it is they who are the lamps of this dull world. 
It is they who shine unquenchable and lovely as 
the clustered Pleiades in the night of our doubt 
and despair. 



226 



THE DESCENT FROM LUXURY 

About the hardest known task is that of corc^ 
ing down, as the County Parson said. 

It is easy to adjust ourselves to new luxuries. 
To get used to doing without them is like pulling 
teeth. 

A friend of mine went from an American col- 
lege to study at at the Sorbonne, the university 
at Paris. After a month or so I met him there. 
He looked as if he had been sick, or had gone 
through some severe mental crisis. 

"What in the world is the matter with you?" 
I asked. 

He laughed. "I've been Frenchifying myself," 
he said, "and it's almost killed me. I have been 
learning to live without heat, light, butter, ice 
water and breakfast. I sit in a room that is bone, 
cold. There is no steam heat. There is a little 
stove the size of a peanut, but it simply smokes, 
it doesn't get hot itself, let alone get you hot. I 
read by a candle instead of a tungsten electric 
light. When I think of my comfortable quarters 
at our old school at home it seems like a dream 
of heaven. Still, I'm getting used to it. But I 

227 



want to tell you that the human animal can ad- 
just himself a lot easier to being comfortable 
than to being uncomfortable. " 

So he can. I think I would only need to ride 
in an automobile a half-dozen times to scorn 
horse flesh forever. 

When a man has been making $1,000 a year, 
and suddenly is promoted to get $2,000, it only 
takes him a week or so to get easily into the way 
of living up to the income. It takes his wife 
only about a minute. 

When "pap gets a patent right and is rich as 
all creation," as Riley describes, and the family 
moves in from Grigsby station to Indianapolis, 
"maw and the girls" rise to the occasion as the 
sparks fly upward. 

Going back to Grigsby station, when pap loses 
his money in one of Mr. G. R. Q. Wallingford's 
enterprises, is another matter. It is fire and sword 
to the soul every step of the way. 

What you have never had, except in your 
dreams, you don't miss. I am perfectly contented 
without a silver bathtub, a valet, a sealskin over- 
coat, a pair of diamond-heeled shoes, a private 
yacht or a morganatic wife; mainly, I suppose, 
because I never possessed any of these things. 

Make me a king or a Russian grand duke in 
Paris for a few weeks, and a very decent sort 
of a chap would be everlastingly spoiled. 

It was doubtless a soul on the return trip from 
prosperity that first uttered that pathetic cry, 

228 



"Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense 
with the necessities." 

Don't pity the family that has never been rich : 
save your pity for the family that has been rich. 

One reason possibly why folks never come 
back to earth from heaven is now manifest. 



229 



THE WHITE NIGHT 

Coffee did it all. I admit it. Alcohol may 
be bad for some people, but for me coffee, u after 
the sun crosses the yard-arm/' is rank poison. 
But I like it. I took it. I fell. Hence the 
"white night." 

A coffee night to me is a curious thing. My 
ordinary powers of common sense, of which I 
flatter myself I have considerable, are paralyzed. 
Every uncommon sense, every secret superstition, 
lurking in my blood, every overcome delusion 
of childhood, every conquered fear, rise and 
master me. 

There's a general jail-delivery of all the non- 
sense that I have kept locked up. 

I am afraid. I am not afraid of anything, 
but of nothing. Do you understand what just 
plain fear is, without any object, just the essence 
of fear? 

My heart beats very loud. I remember how 
frightened I was when I first studied physiology 
at school, and learned what a fragile thing a heart 
is. That old dread comes back. I find myself 
wondering if the thump, thump in my breast is 
going to stop. 

230 



What if I should die? Before me rolls a cine- 
matographic scroll of the whole performance: 
The last breath. The discovery of my lifeless 
remains. The funeral. 

A cricket chirps. Perhaps that is the death- 
watch. People have believed in that. What if 
they are right? 

The window curtain moves. Doubtless a breath 
of air, says my feeble common sense. But my 
strong insanity sweeps this banal explanation 
aside. 

That may be the dead trying to return to me. 
I have heard they make such efforts to commu- 
nicate with the living. I have seen "The Re- 
turn of Peter Grimm," and I have read Mrs. 
Oliphant. 

Which of my dead is it? What would they 
say? Some calamity it is they would warn me 
of. Else why should they trouble to come? 

What calamity? Perhaps it menaces me now. 
Perhaps burglars are in the house. I listen in- 
tently. There ! That sounded like a step on 
the stairs. Was not that the sound of a plank 
of the floor creaking? I try to think how I 
should act if burglars came. Some of them, I 
have heard, shoot anyhow; murder just for the 
pleasure of cruelty, no matter how submissive the 
victim may be. 

A dog suddenly yelps under my window. I 
am rigid with fear. The sound goes through me 
like a knife. 

231 



He had as well bitten me. It cannot be much 
worse to have hydrophobia than to be scared to 
death. 

I grow quieter and sink into a half-sleep. 

Jumping Jerusalem! What was That? I 
I know it is all over with me now. In sheer des- 
peration I leap up and turn on the light. 

The wind had pushed the curtain and the cur- 
tain had knocked a glass from the table. It lies 
shattered on the floor. 

But as far as I am concerned Attila and all his 
men might just as well have pillaged the town. 
For I am all in a cold sweat. 

Then, no one being nigh to hear, I stand in 
my pajamas in the middle of the floor and sol- 
emnly curse coffee and all its works, the wicked 
Arab that invented it, the ships that carry it, the 
merchant that sells it, the cooks that brew it, and 
myself that guzzles it. I execrate and consign 
to the lowest circle of Dante's pit all coffees, 
coffee with cream, coffee with hot milk, coffee 
blond and brunette, mazagran and demi-tasse; 
may they all be sunk in the Seven Seas, or burned 
and their ashes scattered to the four winds of 
heaven, that "no trace nor remembrance may re- 
main of so vile and guilty a thing." Anathema, 
anathema, anathema ! 

The next morning the first thing I want is 
coffee. 



232 



SPOTLITIS 

Very many of the morbidities, pains, and 
glooms of the soul, said the professor to his class 
in the University of Psyche, are due to spotlitis. 
(Always pronounce the penultimate vowel in 
words ending in itis with the long sound of i, 
as in kite.) 

(Twenty pencils arose and fell upon twenty 
note-books, making twenty notes u itis — long i," 
which would save twenty precious youths from 
going out into the world saying brownkeetus and 
appendiseetus.) 

The word spotlitis, continued the professor, 
comes from the word spotlight, meaning an in- 
tense light cast upon some one person on the 
stage in the theatre. The design is, of course, to 
direct the attention of the audience to the person 
thus illuminated. 

The term was first used by Dr. Achdulieber in 
his article in the June number of the Umher 
Review, 1925, to indicate that itch for attention 
which is not only here and there noticeable, but 
also underlies and accounts for many other soul 
lesions. 

(Twenty pencils wrote "Achdulieber ar- 
ticle.") 

233 



It is often found early in childhood, went on 
the Herr Professor. It marks that stage when 
the infant passes over from being charmingly 
naive to being offensively self-conscious. It is 
sometimes, in the earlier periods, called smarta- 
lickitus. 

Careful analysis (Zum Henker, p. 346) shows 
that it is due to a singularly tough and ugly mi- 
crobe, which gets into the ego and produces an 
inflamed condition. 

It seems to come into its fullest and most 
pernicious activity in public characters, such as 
actors, preachers, politicians, and the like. 

Actors have been known to cancel lucrative 
engagements simply because some minor actor 
"got a hand." Grand opera divas have pouted 
themselves into a fever because the scenes were 
not so devised that they could be on the stage 
just before each curtain fall. 

Parsons have betrayed violent symptoms of 
advertising when bitten by this bacillus, and poli- 
ticians have manifested the most surprising spasm. 

(Twenty pencils set down "Surprising.") 

But, resumed the professor, the disease is by 
no means confined to special classes. It is wide- 
spread as the race. The learned Mark Twain, 
doctor of Oxford, pointed out the universality of 
the desire to show off. The judge shows off on 
the bench, the lawyer at the bar, the schoolmaster 
before his pupils, the bishop in his robes, and 

234 



the lady in her social manoeuvres. The common 
symptom is affectation. 

The secondary forms of this malady, however, 
are even more interesting. It seems to be as- 
sumed that to acquire prominence is our being's 
end and aim. The youth are urged to industry, 
and even to morality, so that they "may some 
day be president." The career of successful spot- 
lighters is held up before them as an inducement 
to effort. 

Old age is pitied mainly because one is then 
compelled to yield to younger folk the centre of 
the stage. 

Poets cheapen their work and miss the divine 
reward of high fealty for the unhealthful rays 
of spot-light popularity. 

Artists, scrambling for the same noxious rays, 
fall into mediocrity. 

The spot-light turned upon an author's brain 
seems to produce certain deterioration. 

Many a crime is committed, many a home is 
wrecked, many a love is starved, and all good 
work is spoiled by thirst for notoriety. 

The worst of it all is that we go to church 
presumably to worship the Master of Humilities. 
He who refused all earthly honors for himself 
and advised us to take always the lowest seats, 
and we come home to worship, for the other six 
days of the week, the God of Getting On. 

(Twenty pencils wrote down in twenty note- 
books: "Mem. Get On!") 

235 



THE MINORITY ARE 
IN THE MAJORITY 

A very strong and racking doubt has got into 
my mind. One of the very mud-sills of my sub- 
consciousness, a very "sleeper" of my cosmic 
house, has been uploosed, and all sorts of strange 
fancies, like little white and leggy insects, are 
scampering among my wits. 

For it has occurred to me that, after all, the 
minority are in the majority. I know it sounds 
crazy. I know that. Heaven be thanked! I 
am spared the last illusion of the insane, that I 
am sane. 

But while I have always lived, moved, and 
had my being under conviction that the majority 
not only rules but also actually exists, come to 
think of it, I have never seen a majority, while 
everywhere about us is the large, active, and 
exceedingly vocal and assertive minority. 

The majority of the people in the United States 
believe in our present form of government, yet 
I never met a man in my life that did not think 
he could improve it. 

The majority are Christians, but do you know 
even one or two in your circle of acquaintance 

236 



who dare say, "I am a normal, perfect Christian, " 
as a man would say, "I have a perfect liver"? 

The majority are sound and well, but did you 
ever run across a well woman? 

The majority are sane, yet have you ever found 
one man indubitably so? 

The fact of the matter is that the average man 
is a myth; he is a mathematical hypothesis; he 
exists only for the purpose of statistics and argu- 
ments; he is the stuff out of which generalities 
are formed. He is like an atom, or a kilowatt, 
or a nebular hypothesis. 

Everybody is abnormal. Normality is merely 
the imaginary point where the abnormalities bal- 
ance. 

I never talked any length of time with a human 
being who did not by and by say something like, 
"Well, I am peculiar, I know," "I am strange," 
"I am not like most folks" or words to that effect. 
Strange, that the entire population of the globe 
is in the minority! 

The rarest person in the world to find is the 
one who does, says or thinks as most people do. 
Most people like what is printed in the newspa- 
pers presumably, else it would not be printed, 
but did you ever hear a man do other than curse 
the paper he subscribes for? 

Most people flee the country and love the city, 
but did you ever find a person that did not hate 
cities and love birds and brooks? 

So here's a secret. Everybody is a heretic, it 
237 



is only the majority that are orthodox. Every- 
body is different; only the majority are alike. 
Everybody is both good and bad, much mixed; 
only the majority is good or bad. 

And it's as hard to find the majority as it 
is to find the long lost and deeply sought value 
of Pi. 



238 



FIRE AND FUN 

If I had to be some kind of a heathen I should 
be a sun-worshipper. First, because the sun is 
warm, and the source of all earthly warmth. I 
love warmness. My notion of hell is a place 
where it is cold and dark. Burning is of course 
painful, but freezing is uncomfortable, and as a 
steady thing one can endure pain better than dis- 
comfort. To be somewhere in the cold and dark 
I say is about the height of human misery; you 
might add a stomachache and then wretchedness 
would have its last word. But fire means home 
and cheer and smiles. If I ever built a house I 
should first build a huge fireplace and then con- 
struct the house around it. Loki is certainly my 
friend, he the fire god, nimblest, lithest, happiest 
of all the natural deities. There are few sights 
more cheerful than wood burning. Upon the 
hearth the flames speak directly to the soul and 
say wonderful things to the human spirit, things 
that are not to be uttered in speech or music. 

A wood flame is the pure symbol of fancy, sug- 
gestion, hints, and spirit beckonings. A bonfire 
in the street is also strangely enlivening. Boys 
cluster about it as if under the witch spell of 

239 



crackling flames. A house afire is a fine enter- 
tainment, too — the one amusement free to the 
audience and expensive for the owners and man- 
agers. I love the clang of the fire engine's bell, 
the galloping horses, the thundering hook and 
ladder truck; and then the crowd, the shouts, the 
flames spurting from the windows, the huge bal- 
loons of smoke bellying above all, and the fire- 
men — the last remnant of dark, color, adventure, 
danger, and glorious alarm in this our staid and 
worn out civilization. I should think all boys 
would want to be firemen when they grow up. 

Above us is the great fire-ball, the sun, the 
hearthstone and the bonfire of the world. The 
little seeds quicken at his coming. The flowers 
take their hands from their timid faces and look 
at him. The birds twitter. The animals caper. 
And men's hearts expand in hope. 

Only northern people, nursed in fog and shad- 
ows and cold, can appreciate the sun. We never 
value a thing till we miss it. As these lines are 
written it is midwinter, and I am on a ship in 
mid-ocean bound from New York and twenty de- 
grees below freezing to a land where it is warm. 
We have passed the gulf stream. The fogs and 
storms have left us. The sun is bright. The air 
is soft. The waters are blue. It seems to me I 
have slipped back thirty years. For to-day it 
is light, light as a crystal, light and warm, and 
my soul seems to be coming up like a wet fly to 
warm itself into life again and try its wings. 

240 



After the manner of Saint Francis of Assisi let us 
sing: "Blessed be God for our brother, the sun, 
and for our brother, Fire, so clean and chaste and 
heartening!" 



241 



THE SOUL'S CAPTAINCY 

"Look you, Hilda," exclaims Solness in Il> 
sen's "Master Builder," "look you! There is- 
sorcery in you, too, as there is in me. It is this 
sorcery that imposes action on the powers of 
the beyond. And we have to yield to it. Whether 
we want to or not we must." 

There is about every human being a certain 
sorcery, an invisible power. We control the 
stars, quite as much as they control us. 

A great deal has been said of man being a 
puppet of the gods, but perhaps the gods com- 
plain of being the playthings of men. 

We are told that the great forces of heredity 
and environment manage us and our moods and 
affairs. But I exercise fully as much influence 
upon these forces as they upon me. 

A man has never really found himself and the 
reason why he lives until he has realized the im- 
perial nature of his own will. Then all things 
are grist to his mill. Mankind and its institu- 
tions, heaven and its laws, and hell and its pains 
are in his hand. Whatever they may be they are 
nothing except what they are to him. 

Instead of fate guiding my life, I, in the deep- 
242 



est places of the soul's drama, am unconsciously 
guiding and disposing fate. Whether my career 
be comedy or tragedy depends upon me. Events 
are my chessmen. 

It is this consciousness of inner captaincy that 
makes a soul great. It is in this alone that there 
is any true joy. All bitterness, cursing, despair, 
and pessimism are due to one's losing hold of the 
helm and becoming servant instead of master of 
lifers powers. 



243 



LAMENTING THE LOSS 
OF TAIL AND BARK 

The one thing I regret most keenly among 
the things lost in the scramble upward of evolu- 
tion is the tail, unless it be the bark. Why is it 
that in the survival of the fittest we have retained 
the useless vermiform and lost the useful caudal 
appendage ? 

The more you think of it the more the tail 
grows upon you (I speak in a figure) as a most de- 
sirable and much-to-be-lamented member. Its es- 
pecial value would be for expressing certain emo- 
tions too simple or too subtle to be manifested 
by any means we now possess. For instance, 
pleasure, just plain good feeling — how much more 
perfectly it could be shown by tail wagging than 
by words! By being compelled to squeeze all 
our emotions into grammatical forms of speech 
we grow bromidic, sink into platitudes, and finally 
lose our more naive and direct feelings for lack 
of due ability to give them vent. 

Dogs are more loyal and loving than men 
because they don't have to talk about it. They 
just wag. Hence the sense of primitive affection 
keeps normally alive. 

244 



There are feelings also too fine for other me- 
diums. When you are reading, for example, and 
your wife speaks to you, and you neither wish 
to offend her by saying nothing, nor do you wish 
to let go the interesting page, how convenient it 
would be if you could just wag a large bushy 
tail, to indicate that you appreciated her pres- 
ence, but wished she would kindly clear out. 

In conversation there often occur dull lapses, 
when one can think of nothing to say. What 
a boon it would then be if by vigorously wagging 
one's tail one could indicate that the social in- 
stincts were still flowing, friendliness was still 
burning brightly, even if no sentences of nouns 
and verbs happened to come to mind. 

A young lady likewise might indicate by tail- 
wagging that her sentiments were mildly engaged 
by a young gentleman's personality, even if she 
had never been presented, and did not dare go so 
far as to smile on him or to speak encouraging 
words. 

A minister or an actor could tell by the num- 
ber of wags to the minute just how far he had his 
auditors with him. And for extreme applause the 
bark would be handy. For what was the old- 
fashioned "Amen!" and "Hallelujah!" but a spe- 
cies of canine ululation indicative of forceful ap- 
proval by primal and unspoiled souls?" 

Consider also how efficacious it would be if it 
were good form to howl when the pianist bored 
us, to growl when a book agent approached us, 

245 



to bark beneath the adored one's window until 
she appeared and gave a lady-like yelp or two in 
answer, to give a sinister grumble when some 
one was going a little too far, and then gently 
to wag the tail when he was on the right track! 
It is the eternal necessity of arranging our emo- 
tions in words and getting them into logical form 
that is our trouble. It is for this reason that 
some persons cease showing emotion altogether. 
We call them grumpy. They are not. They feel 
as much as do the loquacious. If they had tails 
they would wag them. As it is they are sup- 
pressed and dumb. 

The tail and bark were the organs of the 
simpler emotions. With their falling off we have 
become complex, artificial and decadent. Evolu- 
tion has trimmed us at both ends. 



246 



WHAT I SHALL DO WHEN 
I GET TO HEAVEN 

The first thing I shall do will be to read up 
for a thousand years or so. 

Nothing so impresses me with the brevity of 
life as to enter a library — oppresses, I would bet- 
ter say. 

How can one find time to get even so much 
as acquainted with literature, when a Niagara of 
books not to mention magazines and papers, roars 
from the jaws of the press in an unending stream? 

In heaven, time being no matter, I shall learn 
all the languages earth ever had (heaven has 
but one — multae terricolis linguae, coelestibus una) 
clear back to the guttural clicks of the stone-age 
man, and the glug-gug of the lake dwellers; and 
get all local colors, and hence know all life. 

Celestial beings move with the rapidity of 
thought. Distance makes no difference. Wish 
you were on Antares, and behold! you are there. 

Now, the science-story-tellers say that we see 
the light of certain stars that may have been ex- 
tinguished centuries ago. Rapidly as light travels, 
it takes ages for it to cross the universe, if it 

247 



ever gets across at all. Hence, travelling with 
thought-rapidity I can overtake light anywhere 
along its road. Consequently all I need to do, 
in order to witness with my own eyes anything 
that ever happened on earth, is to wish myself 
at such a distance as shall bring me to where the 
light of that event is fresh. 

Placing myself at so many million miles I am 
present at the death of Caesar; at so many more 
million I walk with Pericles the ways of Athens; 
so many more I see Moses coming down from 
Sinai. So in Heaven I shall be able to be "among 
those present" at anything that ever took place. 
Interesting. What? 

In heaven also I shall have time to develop all 
my latent capacities. The only reason I have 
never written like Shakespeare is that I haven't 
had time. That would take me several hundred 
years. 

So if you meet me a million years from now 
on some satellite of Sigma Bootes you will find 
me to be a combined Beethoven, Socrates, Ra- 
phael, Newton, Agassiz, Paderewski, and J. 
Caesar. You will see that I can do anything any- 
body ever did better than he did it; can lay 
brick better than the best of terrestrial masons, 
also out-Caruso Caruso in singing, and teach 
your Miltons the art of poetry. 

As mere duration, heaven is rather a dull pros- 
pect; but as infinite development it's an amazing 
idea. For, as John Fiske says, "the essential 

248 



feature of man is his unlimited possibilities of de- 
velopment." 

And not only shall I increase in skill and all 
kinds of efficiency, but my other powers, what 
may they not become when they are stamped 
with immortality! 

My memory — it will be stored fuller than the 
British Museum or the Vatican. 

My will — it will be strong enough to move a 
train of cars. I speak soberly. Who knows that 
the human will may not be harnessed some day, 
as well as electricity? 

My taste — through infinite crudities it will live 
and become divine. 

And my character — what power, gentleness, 
goodness, nobleness and majesty it might acquire 
in eons of experience! 

This is what is meant by that striking word 
"the power of an endless life." 

And that high word of Paul that we shall be 
"changed from glory to glory." 



249 



THE HARP OF A THOUSAND STRINGS 

The phrase I get from the most industrious 
of hymn-smiths, Isaac Watts : 

Strange that a harp of thousand strings 
Should keep in tune so long; 

referring to you and me. 

Considered as an instrument to play upon, man 
assumes a new, sharp interest. 

For man is not only a citizen and a soul, a 
piece of the population and a subject for the 
surgeon's knife and the evangelist's zeal; he is 
also a piano. 

He is an organ, a horn, a fiddle; likewise a 
photographic apparatus, taking the most amaz- 
ing moving pictures; an electric battery; a book 
wherein past impressions are recorded. 

Hence it is more important to learn to play 
him than it is to learn to play "upon the harp 
and the passel-tree," to use Mrs. Norrocks's 
reading of the Scriptures. 

There's many a young lady taking piano les- 
sons who would far better be putting in her time 
practising how to learn to play upon the man. 

250 



Not that young ladies don't play upon the man 
as it is; only they go at it clumsily, they don't 
know how, and hence produce some racking dis- 
cords. 

What an instrument a man is ! I have climbed 
all around through the insides of a pipe organ 
and admired its maze of slats and strings and 
tubes; I have stood by and watched the tuner ex- 
pose the entrails of the piano, criss-crossed with 
its myriad wires, and with its little felt-thimbled 
fingers all in a row; but a man beats them all. 

Read in your anatomy about that little harp 
inside the ear and the tiny bones there to catch 
sound waves; of the blood canals irrigating the 
whole mechanism; and of the nerve-telegraph 
wires along which flash countless messages hourly, 
that make the Western Union system look like 
child's play. 

And when you enter the soul-box, where 
pure thought and feeling are handled, you will 
agree that the man himself is more marvellous 
than anything he ever made. 

There are solo effects. Upon this instrument 
you can produce any pain, from itching to agony; 
any pleasure, from the mildest comfort to the 
loudest hee-haw. 

Orchestrally taken, what massed results can 
be secured! Watch the orator inflaming the 
passions of a crowd. Savonarola raising the 
Florentines to religious frenzy. Patrick Henry 
fusing the delegates into a flame of patriotism. 

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What is the general, Napoleon or Frederick, 
but a band-master directing his companies as if 
they were groups of first violins or 'cellos? 

And the architect; he plays upon dead things 
and living workers; as he waves his baton, stones 
leave their quarry and trees their native woods; 
hordes of bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters, team- 
sters, artists and artisans come trooping; till at 
last the cathedral rises, the long sweet symphony 
of centuries. No wonder Schelling called architec- 
ture "frozen music." 

What fingers play me! Love, hate, ambition, 
envy, aspiration, despair! 

God himself does not disdain to make on me 
his celestial melodies. 

Let me therefore be in tune. Evil spirits 
within and without are eager to strike forth from 
my strings their raucous cacophonies. Angels of 
grace touch me to their perfect strains. Let me 
therefore be so in tune that I may catch the 
humbler songs of things, so that 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears; 

And that I may echo back something of that starry 
strain above, where 

Not the smallest orb that thou beholdest 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims! 

252 



THE DREAM-LOST 

If I had to choose between the things I have 
missed in my dreams and what I have gained in 
my waking hours, I should not hesitate. Give 
me the dream lost. 

Just as the mendacious fisher tells that the 
biggest fish were those that got off the hook and 
fell back into the water, so my greatest prizes 
are those that slipped out of my hands as I 
tried to carry them over from dream to day. 

The fox in the fable called sour the grapes he 
could not reach (though, by the way, who ever 
heard of a fox wanting grapes?) ; but as for me, 
the sour grapes are too often those I get, and 
the luscious ones hang too high in the arbor of 
dreams. 

In my dreams I find pocketbooks, great fat ones, 
stuffed with green, and when I am about to spend 
the money I wake up. In the daytime I lose 
pocketbooks. 

In my dreams I am unanimously elected; by 
day I am not even a candidate. 

It is said of Coleridge that he composed the 
poem "Kubla Khan" in a dream and wrote out 

253 



a part of it when he awoke, but could not finish 
it. The last lines left him. 

The other night I composed a perfectly stun- 
ning drama. It was novel, striking, epochal. 
The situations were entirely new, the interest was 
intense, the lines were beyond Shakespeare, and 
the conclusion was a dramatic thunderbolt. I lost 
the whole thing before I could get my clothes on. 
It had vanished like frost on the windowpane. 

If I had all my dream-lost treasures I should 
be wise as Solomon, witty as a Mark Twain, 
clever as Herrmann the magician, rich as Roths- 
child, and handsome as the Old Nick himself. 

If you could only visit the inside of my mind 
when I am asleep you would certainly say, "He 
is the deuce of a fellow, and no mistake." 

There are too many things going on when one 
is conscious. Every chair and table distracts one. 
Every sound and odor and other bodily sensa- 
tion gets in one's road. But in dreams it is you 
and your pure idea. With that perfect union 
there is nothing to forbid the banns. 

Still, it is about as well, perhaps, in the end. 
The classic question has never been settled, 
whether the king who dreamed every night that he 
was a beggar was happier than the beggar who 
dreamed every night he was a king. 

And when you say heaven is but a good dream 
and hell a bad one, you haven't mended matters; 
for one can really be happier and also suffer more 
intensely in a dream than in waking. To live on 

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earth and dream of heaven is possibly as well as 
to live in heaven and dream of earth. 

When we awake there are compensations, when 
we dream there are none. 

The highest joy and the highest pain are those 
of the unloosed mind in dreams. 



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